Hi,

I am new to the group and would like some advice. I have been a quality consultant for 3 years and have 10 years experience in the field. My work focused on helping clients set up and maintain quality systems. I am interested in pursing auditor certification with the goal of being able to do certification audits but need some help. I understand the requirement to take an accredited class but I do not understand how one then gains the audit experience time required for certification. Could someone please enlighten me as to how I would go about attaining the required days needed.

Your help is appreciated!!

Welcome to the cove:agree::bigwave:

This is the problem, how to get experience.
If you want to do 3rd party audits then you need to have a certifciation body (CB) to work for.
Try to find one and then discuss the possibility of working with them.
CB's will have a procedure for recognising auditors, first a recognised course then usually an internal witness process.
Try to find contacts with you CB's, in Germany there are a lot.
I think that every auditor here has a different story as how he started.

The best of luck

Yes, certifiers are good people to approach - after all,they'd be who you would be working for! If they're in need of auditors, they may well be able & disposed to help. But they are often a bit wary of doing this with non-employees, for obvious reasons.

I would also approach the organisations who do the certifying of auditors (ie, register them - as opposed to certification of organisations) with this question, and see what advice they can provide. Or perhaps download (if possible) their guidelines which should give you some ideas.

For example, here (Australia) there are at least 2 bodies who certify auditors: RABQSA (http://www.rabqsa.com)and IRCA (http://www.irca.org). I know RABQSA has some guidelines on their site.

You could also count in for your experience (on the way to becoming a full 3rd party auditor) some 2nd party audits - these usually have to be separate from consulting for obvious reasons. You might (or might not) offer this at reduced rates if you really need the hours - one of my previous clients who got bitten by the whole 9001 bug and went on to do auditing courses then offered pre-certification audits for free/very low cost to organisations, in order to get the required hours, which was a win/win on both sides.