A self-rating tells you how you see yourself. A resume bullet or a review comment has to show what you did. The two are connected, since your profile can point you toward which behaviors to look for in your own history, but only the second kind of sentence persuades anyone else. This guide shows how to write it for all six competencies without inventing a single number.
A rating is a mirror, a bullet is evidence
Research reviews on how well people judge their own abilities, such as Zell and Krizan's metasynthesis, find that self-views and outside measures line up only moderately. That is not a reason to distrust yourself. It is a reason to carry something a reader can check.
A level word from the Competency Test is not checkable. It is your own description of how often you act in six ways, produced by a free JobCannon test that is not an ability test and not validated. A sentence about what you did, for whom, and what happened is checkable. Your profile's job is to suggest where to dig in your memory; the bullet's job is to hold what you dig up.
Behavior, context, result
Every strong bullet or review sentence has three parts: the behavior (what you did, led by a verb), the context (where, for whom, under what pressure) and the result (what changed, or what someone could do afterwards that they could not before).
- Label, not evidence: "Excellent communication skills."
- Behavior, context, result: "Wrote the weekly status note for [team], covering what shipped, what was blocked and who had to decide; [result you can point to]."
Anything in square brackets is a placeholder to replace with your own real detail. If you have no honest figure for a result, do not guess. Use a plain fact instead (who relied on it, how long it ran, what stopped happening) or drop the result clause and keep the behavior.
Six competencies, six bullets, six review lines
These are templates. Every bracket is yours to fill with something true, and any [number] means a figure from your own records, nothing else.
- Communication. Resume: "Wrote the weekly status note for [team], covering what shipped, what was blocked and who had to decide; [result you can point to]." Review: "I moved our handovers from spoken to written ([example, date]). I still skip the summary when rushed, so I am keeping a template."
- Problem solving. Resume: "Traced [recurring problem] to [cause] by comparing [what you compared], and fixed it by [action]; [what stopped happening]." Review: "On [issue] I wrote down what I knew and what I was guessing before changing anything ([outcome]). Next I want to involve [person] sooner."
- Leadership. Resume: "Took ownership of [task nobody owned], set owners and dates for [number] people, and followed up until it shipped." Review: "I coordinated [project] when no one was assigned ([what happened]). I want to get better at handing work off instead of holding it."
- Planning. Resume: "Planned [project] backwards from the [date] deadline into dated steps, flagged [the step that was slipping] early, and delivered [what and when]." Review: "I plan the main path well and under-count interruptions. For [project] I added a buffer before [dependency] ([result])."
- Adaptability. Resume: "Took over [new area] at short notice when [change], learned [tool or process], and kept [existing work] on schedule." Review: "When priorities moved on [date], I re-sorted my list that day and told [people] what changed for them ([result])."
- Teamwork. Resume: "Worked with [roles] on [shared goal], covering [colleague]'s tasks during [period] and agreeing a split of [work] that held until [date]." Review: "[Colleague] and I disagreed about [topic]; I [what you did] ([outcome]). I am practising asking for help earlier."
Placeholders, not guesses
- Fill each bracket from something you can point to: a sent email, a ticket, a calendar entry, an old review, a colleague's memory.
- If you cannot find the figure, delete the figure, not the sentence. Keep the plain fact you do know.
- Do not round up. If you must approximate, say "about" and make sure you could defend it if the reader asks how you counted.
- If you cannot recall anything specific for a competency, leave it off. That may tell you something about how often you really use it, and a month of tracked practice can give you real examples to write down.
Words to prefer and claims you cannot prove
Prefer plain verbs that name an act: wrote, ran, set up, agreed, re-planned, handed over, traced, escalated, coordinated, taught, asked. Prefer plain nouns too: owner, date, checklist, handover.
Be wary of anything you could not back up if the reader asked "how do you know?":
- Labels with no behavior: "excellent communicator", "natural leader", "strong team player".
- Rankings: "top performer", "best on the team", unless someone documented it.
- Your Competency Test level or percent, which is a self-rating and carries no outside check.
- Absolutes: "always", "never", "every time".
- A group result claimed as yours alone. Say what you contributed.
For layout and keywords, see what makes a resume ATS-friendly. For the skills section, the Skills Audit gives you an inventory of what you can do.
In a performance review: two or three competencies and one honest gap
A self-evaluation does not need all six. Pick the two or three your role and your manager's priorities touch most. For each, give behavior, context and result, then one line on what you want to do next. Include one honest gap; with someone who watched your year, it makes the rest easier to believe.
If you can, ask your manager or a colleague for one observation about the competency you feel least sure of. Where their view differs from your self-rating, that difference is the useful part. Your profile from the Competency Test is the place to start the conversation, not a score to defend. The companion piece, strengths and weaknesses answers from your competency profile, covers the spoken version.