Evaluation competencies and skills
Regardless of your role, evaluation competencies underpin successful job performance and career advancement. Understanding these competencies will help you identify how to leverage them in your career.
Competency frameworks
Competencies are the skills, knowledge, and behaviours needed to succeed in specific roles. For young and emerging evaluators, understanding and building these competencies can guide career development.
There are several competency frameworks that describe the skills, knowledge, attributes and behaviors required to fulfill evaluation positions. Competency frameworks help individuals and organisations assess their strengths and gaps, leading to tailored professional development plans. These frameworks are also used to recruit staff, build evaluation teams, and develop training programs.
Competencies can be organised around skill levels, such as novice, skilled, or expert. Some frameworks focus on evaluation, others on monitoring, and some cover both. Different organisations, like government departments or professional networks, develop competency frameworks to support roles ranging from evaluators to program managers.
Overarching skills
Evaluation competencies are comprehensive and a good place to learn what skills are required for a career in evaluation. However, there are a few important skills that are key for ethical and responsible practice in evaluation. These are critical for all evaluators, emerging or established, to continually work towards improving. These skills include:
Evaluative thinking
Evaluative thinking involves the ability to apply critical, creative, and inferential thinking to interpret data. It necessitates the formulation of empirical and evaluative questions, along with the identification of values that guide the interpretation of data.
Find out more about evaluative thinking
Cultural competency
Cultural competency ensures that evaluations are attuned to the cultural context of the communities they are designed to serve. It involves leveraging local knowledge and expertise to yield outcomes that are more meaningful and have a greater impact.
Find out more about cultural competency here.
Tips from an emerging evaluator
"As young and emerging evaluators (particularly of the Global majority), your diverse cultures and unique perspectives are strengths, not limitations. Embrace your authenticity, let your imaginations flourish, and infuse your cultural identity and heritage into your work. It is through this fusion of self and practice, nurtured by constant reflection and growth, that you will discover and refine your 'special sauce' – that distinct flavor that makes your contributions invaluable to the evaluation field.”
Ethical practice
Ethical practice involves protecting the rights and well-being of all people involved in evaluations, seeking truth and being transparent.
Find out more about ethical practice here.
Tips from an emerging evaluator
“As an evaluator, one must uphold professional ethics in getting the work done. It is only when you respect the culture, tradition, norms, and beliefs of the evaluaned and the people that you will get the true nature of the evaluand.”