In 1987 the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) commissioned a competency development study for human resource development (HRD) practitioners (McLagan and Suhadolnik, 1989). The result was a prescriptive model of how to develop HRD practitioners grouped under the four headings of technical, business, interpersonal and intellectual (McLagan, 1989a, 1989b, 1989c). In New Zealand the focus has been primarily on training activity with little attention directed at developing the competency of our practitioners (Gilbertson et al ., 1989; Stablein and Geare, 1993; New Zealand Employers Federation, 1989, 1992, 1994; OECD, 1993). The purpose of this study is to examine the competencies requested of prospective New Zealand HRD practitioners by employers against the ASTD's 1987 competency model (McLagan and Suhadolnik, 1989). Five hundred and eighty-seven HRM job advertisements from The New Zealand Herald , The Dominion , and The Press throughout 1996 were coded into a database using content analysis. Results show that HRD represents approximately one third of all HRM activity with 200 (34 per cent) of the 587 advertisements specifically requesting HRD competencies. A total of 1,113 competencies or approximately six competencies per job advertisement were identified. The competencies most in demand were for technical HRD skills (402, or 36 per cent) followed by interpersonal skills (291, or 26 per cent). The principal weakness of the ASTD model was that it did not reflect HRD practice by excluding personal competencies. Significantly, personal competencies (at 201, or 18 per cent) made up a sizeable proportion of the total competencies gathered.