During the last decade validation of skills and competences has become a frequently used method within the Swedish public sector. The skills and competences which individuals learn and develop, often in a workplace context, can in this way become visualized, documented and valuated. The speeding up of the education process and meeting the demands of competence in job transition situations can be seen as the most important advantages of validation. Even if validation as a method in visualizing competence has not been commonly used in the private sector the need for development of learning and competence at the workplace has however been something that the sector has given high priority to, much due to the competition advantages a well developed strategy of supplying competence can give. In this study identification, visualisation, evaluation and management of competence within both public and private sector is looked at, mostly through interviews made with personal managers, team leaders and union representatives. The result shows that there are both important similarities and differences between the public and the private sector in visualizing, developing competence. This can mostly be explained by their different starting points as organisations and their individual objectives.