The Metallographic Skills Competition is a significant scientific and technological event for university students majoring in materials, aiming to cultivate talents with outstanding comprehensive competencies. This paper delves into the deficiencies that arise in the selection and training of talents when holding the competition at Wuhan University of Technology (WHUT). Reforms and practices were implemented at multiple levels, including competition organization, training methods and evaluation systems to address these deficiencies. In the process of practice, it was found that the Metallographic Skills Competition holds broad appeal among materials students. The overall evaluation of the reformed cultivation process was high, with about 87.4% of the students considering the overall arrangement of the competition as reasonable and satisfactory. Regarding competence development, more than 84% of the students believed that their professional competency, hands-on ability, self-learning ability, communication skills and experimental literacy improved through participation in the Metallographic Skills Competition.