Those who wish to relate education and assessment to the realities of practice in human services sometimes turn to the field for information about the nature of jobs. To determine competencies in counseling and human service agencies, an instrument was developed to survey attitudes of 502 human service providers and 51 clients from 24 agencies. Five dimensions or factors of competence in human service work were indicated: (1) developing helping relationships; (2) conformity to minimum work standards; (3) technical and administrative knowledge; (4) diagnostic and problem solving ability; and (5) human resource development skills. Factors 1 and 4 were judged to be critical in preventing client harm, and factors 4 and 5 were considered typical of superior performance. The findings have implications for program improvement, student assessment, and resource pooling as well as licensing, certification, and Civil Service applications. (JAC)