It is expected that the number of evaluators will continue to grow in the near future. However, the heterogeneity of different national contexts makes the consolidation of a consistent ‘jurisdiction’ for the professional evaluator rather problematic. This article contributes to the debate on the professionalization of evaluators by looking at practices attributed, competences and skills required by employers, and the main topics addressed by the community of evaluators. The authors draw on various sources – ISCO08 (International Standard Classification of Occupation); ESCO (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations); job offers posted on the EES (European Evaluation Society) website; EES LinkedIn group – to argue that the practice of evaluation has achieved a supranational dimension, with potential consequences both on evaluators’ educational profile and on the ways in which evaluations are commissioned and conducted.

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Since some decades professionalism is profoundly changed and traditional approaches have now become insufficient to understand its developments, as mono-dimensional. During the 20th century many professions have been employed within organizational contexts, causing a bureaucratization and standardization of many professional activities. Organizations have become one of the main places in which professional practices take place and professionalism can no longer be considered a «third logic», different from market and bureaucracy (Freidson 2001). Pervasiveness of organizations in professional sphere has also led to the conceptualization of a new kind of «occupational professionalism» (Evetts 2006, 2011, 2014). The paper proposes a systemic perspective to the professions analysis within the organizational contexts, according to which the professional competence plays a pivotal role. The study focuses on social field and particularly on local systems of measures against poverty, providing the findings of a case-study conducted in Italy. Professional competences assumes a key role, as their exercise is currently affecting the redefinition of contents and strategies of social interventions, in the delicate balance between the consolidated settings (locally developed in heterogeneous way) and the orientation towards the administrative re-centralization at national level, within a common community framework.