UN competencies are the behaviours a UN job opening asks you to show, such as the values and behaviours in the UN Secretariat’s framework, and each one comes with indicators that describe it in practice. To score your resume against a competency-based posting, list every competency the opening names, find a dated example from your work for each, and mark the ones with no evidence before you apply.
A competency is a way of working that an organisation names and describes with indicators, such as planning work or collaborating across teams. A skill is narrower: a tool, a method or a language. A UN job opening usually asks for both, and the two need different evidence on your resume.
What are the UN competencies today?
The UN Secretariat launched its “Competencies for the Future” in 1999. Its Values and Behaviours Framework builds on them, and the UN Policy Portal lists it as a Secretary-General’s bulletin, ST/SGB/2024/4. It has nine elements:
| Values | Behaviours |
|---|---|
| Inclusion | Connect and Collaborate |
| Integrity | Analyse and Plan |
| Humility | Deliver Results with Positive Impact |
| Humanity | Learn and Develop |
| Adapt and Innovate |
The framework page says the nine elements came from a co-creation process involving nearly 4,500 staff, and that they will inform human resources processes such as recruitment. Each behaviour has examples at three levels: all staff, all managers and senior leaders. Read the level that matches the post you want.
The Secretariat’s applicant guide, republished in August 2024, tells applicants to pay attention to the competencies stated in each job opening, and says applicants may be assessed on them in different ways, including a competency-based interview. It also encourages people to apply where they meet at least the required criteria and have already shown the competencies the opening names.
Do all UN organisations use the same competencies?
No. Each organisation in the UN system publishes its own framework:
| Organisation | Framework | What it names |
|---|---|---|
| UN Secretariat | Values and Behaviours Framework | Four values and five behaviours, in the table above |
| UNICEF | Competency Framework | Eight competencies, from “Builds and maintains partnerships” to “Nurtures, leads and manages people”, the last for managers |
| UNFPA | Values and core competencies in its 2026 internship roster | Core competencies such as achieving results, being accountable and working in teams |
| WFP | Behavioural competencies on its JPO page | Five behaviours, among them “Drives results and delivers on commitments” |
| WHO | Enhanced WHO Global Competency Model | Three groups: core, managerial and leadership |
UNICEF’s framework is based on its core values. Its 2020 framework names five of them, and its careers page now lists six, adding sustainability. The other six UNICEF competencies are self-awareness and ethical awareness, the drive to achieve results for impact, innovating and embracing change, managing ambiguity and complexity, thinking and acting strategically, and working collaboratively with others.
So a resume written for one organisation’s words will not match another’s exactly. Read the competency names and indicators in the opening you are applying to, and work from those.
How do you score your resume against a competency-based posting?
Score it by hand, competency by competency. The UN’s guidance on competency-based interviews tells applicants to review the competencies in the job opening and to match their past behaviour and experience with what the job asks, with examples for each competency. The same evidence belongs on the resume.
- Copy the competencies. Write down each competency in the opening, with the indicators printed under it.
- Find the evidence. For each one, find a line on your resume or profile that shows it, with a date and a place.
- Score each line. Give 0 when there is no example, 1 when there is an example with no result, and 2 when the example says what you did and what changed.
- Check the required criteria separately. Education, years of experience and languages are pass or fail, so confirm each one apart from the competencies.
- Fix the gaps honestly. Where a score is 0 or 1, add the real example you left out, or accept that the post asks for something you have not yet done.
A score of 2 on every competency does not guarantee a shortlist. It means a reader can find the evidence without guessing.
A worked example
Take an illustrative opening that names the five Secretariat behaviours, and a candidate who has worked as a programme assistant for three years.
| Competency | Evidence on the resume | Score | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connect and Collaborate | “Coordinated a monthly meeting of six partner organisations” | 1 | Add what the meetings produced |
| Analyse and Plan | “Built the annual workplan and budget tracker for a two-person team” | 2 | None |
| Deliver Results with Positive Impact | “Responsible for reporting” | 0 | Name a report, its deadline and who used it |
| Learn and Develop | Nothing | 0 | Add a course or a new task taken on, with its date |
| Adapt and Innovate | “Moved the team’s filing to a shared drive, which cut search time” | 2 | None |
Two lines need work before this application. Neither needs a new claim, only the detail the candidate already knows. When the opening is for a manager, read the “all managers” level of each behaviour and score against that.
Keep the results in your notes for each opening, as tracking applications suggests, so you can reuse the evidence in the interview.
What does Zorlya’s score measure, and what does it miss?
Zorlya’s score is a different tool. How Zorlya scores a job explains it in full: four parts, which are resume fit, skills match, salary fit and location fit, a fifth seniority signal when the posting states a level, and a short reason when you refresh your matches. It tells you whether the work fits you. It does not read competencies.
Three limits matter for a UN posting:
- Skills match reads named skills. It works from a fixed list of named skills, most of them technical: tools, languages and methods. Leadership and mentoring are on the list, and teamwork and communication are not. When the list finds fewer than three skills in a posting, a model is asked to name them instead. Either way, a behaviour such as “Connect and Collaborate” is not a named skill. Read the matched and missing lists on the job’s page before you trust the number.
- A posting with no readable skills is not a perfect match. If a posting names no skills Zorlya can read, skills match starts from 50 and the screen says so.
- A UN grade is not read as a seniority level. The seniority signal comes from words in the title, such as junior, associate, senior or lead. A grade such as P-3 is not one of them, so a title such as “Programme Officer (P-3)” is scored on the four parts alone.
Use the score to decide which openings deserve an evening of work, and the competency score above to do that work.
Questions people ask
What are the UN core values?
The Secretariat’s Values and Behaviours Framework names four values: inclusion, integrity, humility and humanity. Other organisations name their own, so UNICEF’s list, for example, is different.
What is a competency-based job description?
It is a job opening that lists the behaviours the role needs beside the duties and qualifications. The Secretariat’s applicant guide tells applicants to pay special attention to four parts of an opening: education, work experience, languages and competencies. The first three are checked as requirements, and the competencies are tested later, often in the interview.
How are UN competencies tested?
The applicant guide says shortlisted applicants may be invited to written exercises, presentations, technical tests, knowledge-based interviews, competency-based interviews or other assessments, and that the competency-based interview is a preferred method for job openings.
Should I name the competencies on my resume?
Name the evidence, not the label. A line that says “strong collaboration skills” shows nothing a screener can check. A line that names the partners, the meeting and the result shows the behaviour.
Can Zorlya score my resume against UN competencies?
No. Zorlya scores the fit of the work, your skills, the pay and the place, and writes a reason. Scoring competencies is the manual check in this post.
What we know and what we do not
The framework names and the applicant guidance come from the UN’s own pages, read when this post was written. We could not read a current Secretariat job opening, because the UN Careers pages need JavaScript, so we cannot say whether every opening now prints the values and behaviours or the older competencies. The names in WHO’s model were not readable. The worked example is illustrative.
Every Zorlya fact above was checked against Zorlya’s code: the scoring parts, the skills list, the fallback to a model and the seniority words. How to read a job posting covers the parts of an opening other than its competencies.