In this paper we present an approach on the one hand for competence management and discovery on the other hand for knowledge representation languages. By competence, we mean the capability or services of a physical or a non physical entity (an object, a software component, a possible industrial partner, a web service, etc.). The competence management is a complex process that we treat into three steps: competence representation, competence organization and competence use while searching entities that can satisfy a need. Competence management, being the management of knowledge about competence, can take advantage from the knowledge representation languages to support the competence management process. One of the originalities of this paper consists in using Conceptual Graphs knowledge representation language to support the mentioned process.