There is currently a great demand, which looks set to continue to grow in the near future, for professionals in the Information Systems and Technology area. The search for these professionals faces the difficulty of hiring individuals suited to the company’s culture and who have a set of competencies that can add value to the company in the short term, with the possibility of a lasting relationship and with gains for both parties, employee and employer. However, several references that assist in the structuring of professional profiles do not follow a standard when using the concepts needed to describe professional competencies, falling short to provide a more accurate support to the process of hiring and developing professionals. This work analyzes eight competency frameworks, reviews the definitions of competency-related concepts and proposes a competency grammar to standardize and clarify the specification of competencies, by resorting to Backus-Naur Form. To validate the proposal, Information S ystems and Technolog y professionals, as well as practitioners from four other professional areas, reported attributes of their occupations, in light of the adopted definitions and observing the proposed grammatical rules.