Where to start an Auditing Career?

[weescot]

Hi,
I have been reading posts on the cove for a few months now and would like to thank everyone for their time and great advice.
I have been working in medical manufacturing as a sales and service manager since 2005, we implemented ISO 9001 & 13485 in 2007 and I was made responsible for controlling the process. I started doing our internal audits and
took the internal auditor course in 2010. I realized that this is something that I really enjoy doing and decided to pursue a career as a lead auditor. I have recently completed the ISO 9001 & ISO 14001 lead auditor course and I have been on a couple of audits with a local lead auditor. At this point I have come to a bit of a standstill and was wondering if anyone could give me any advice/contacts that may be able to take me on audits to get in the audit days required for IRCA certification. Do any of the CB's/registrars train auditors? The few I have contacted will only hire certified lead auditors. Lastly I have been advised not to apply for IRCA certification as a provisional auditor but to wait until I have enough audit experience to apply directly for lead auditor does everyone agree with this or would it benefit me to have this certification.
I would appreciate any advice or comments.

Jacqueline

 

[ScottK]

Hi,
I have been reading posts on the cove for a few months now and would like to thank everyone for their time and great advice.
I have been working in medical manufacturing as a sales and service manager since 2005, we implemented ISO 9001 & 13485 in 2007 and I was made responsible for controlling the process. I started doing our internal audits and
took the internal auditor course in 2010. I realized that this is something that I really enjoy doing and decided to pursue a career as a lead auditor. I have recently completed the ISO 9001 & ISO 14001 lead auditor course and I have been on a couple of audits with a local lead auditor. At this point I have come to a bit of a standstill and was wondering if anyone could give me any advice/contacts that may be able to take me on audits to get in the audit days required for IRCA certification. Do any of the CB's/registrars train auditors? The few I have contacted will only hire certified lead auditors. Lastly I have been advised not to apply for IRCA certification as a provisional auditor but to wait until I have enough audit experience to apply directly for lead auditor does everyone agree with this or would it benefit me to have this certification.
I would appreciate any advice or comments.

Jacqueline

Bumping... We have a lot of auditing professionals here that should have some good advice.

Welcome to Cove, Jacqueline.

 

[weescot]

Thank you
I hope so!

 

[qusys]

Hi,
I have been reading posts on the cove for a few months now and would like to thank everyone for their time and great advice.
I have been working in medical manufacturing as a sales and service manager since 2005, we implemented ISO 9001 & 13485 in 2007 and I was made responsible for controlling the process. I started doing our internal audits and
took the internal auditor course in 2010. I realized that this is something that I really enjoy doing and decided to pursue a career as a lead auditor. I have recently completed the ISO 9001 & ISO 14001 lead auditor course and I have been on a couple of audits with a local lead auditor. At this point I have come to a bit of a standstill and was wondering if anyone could give me any advice/contacts that may be able to take me on audits to get in the audit days required for IRCA certification. Do any of the CB's/registrars train auditors? The few I have contacted will only hire certified lead auditors. Lastly I have been advised not to apply for IRCA certification as a provisional auditor but to wait until I have enough audit experience to apply directly for lead auditor does everyone agree with this or would it benefit me to have this certification.
I would appreciate any advice or comments.

Jacqueline

Hi Jacqueline,
welcome on the forum.
Before pursuing a lead auditor career with a certification body, I advice towork for a certain time in one or more company, also in different business so that you could understand the different dynamics of management systems ( quality, safety,environment etc...). A very interesting sector is automotive one, where ISO TS 16949 applies. I suggest to follow courses for this standard that is very stringent. I also advice to follow ISO 19001 course for audting techniques, as well as those related to quality methodologies such as FMEA, COntrol plan , MSA,
SPC, PPAP, APQP an so on . A good auditor should have a solid backgroudin these matters as well as statistics, process mapping etc.... These are thing that you can mature working in a company and see problem from various perspective. I think that after 10-15 years of working in a company, one could attempt to search for new opportunity as lead auditor for a CB.
Hope this helps

 

[Randy]

I work for a CB as do many others here and they'll probably say the same thing I'm going to, unless you already qualify as a Lead Auditor you may be barking up the wrong tree. Even tougher is that it's desirable that you be qualified or qualifiable in more than one management system with 9001 being the most common and least needed out there. If you can get 13485 Lead qualified or qualifiable you may have a chance, but CB's aren't in the business of training folks to be Lead's, they're in the business of billing a Lead out for upwards of a couple thousand dollars a day depending upon the standard.

You may ask, what makes me qualified to say what I did, well with my current employer I currently hold 7 Lead Auditor credentials meeting accreditation requirements so trust me.

Also, many CB's want you to be able to bring something to the table and that something is broad based experience that actually has some meat on the bones....None of this "I read and article in a magazine" stuff.

Now can you get a job with a CB with limited personal experience and qualification? Sure, but you can also be paid about $200 a day and hanldle your expenses up front, and then pray for the check before the credit card bill is due.

Professional auditing ain't all roses, it ain't glamerous, it ain't sexy, and it sure as h3ll ain't George Clooney in "Up in the air"

 

[weescot]

Thank you Randy and QUSYS for your response. I understand that I need to gain experience as an auditor in the field to offer something to the CB the dilemma I face is how to gain this experience.

 

[Randy Lefferts]

I think what qusys was talking about was gaining experience in the industry(ies) before heading to an audit career.

I am terrible with analogies but will give it a shot anyway.

Your furnace breaks down. You have a choice of 2 repairmen. One of them is a graduate of a certification program and has the book smarts on how to repair a furnace. He shows up, checks the flashing code and determines it's an open limit switch. So his training tells him to replace the limit switch. That will be the direction he goes and when he finds that the limit switch code is still open, he will move to the next in the list of troubleshooting steps.

Repairman 2 also achieved his certification years ago but has been working as a repairman for 10 years. He comes in, sees the code for a limit switch and instead of changing out the limit switch, he looks at other areas first. He knows there are several things that can cause a limit switch to remain open, due to working in the industry and seeing real world examples. He finds a bird had somehow flown down and become stuck inside the furnace (dead of course) and this was causing the switch to remain in an open state.

I am not saying repairman #1 wouldn't have found the problem, just that what one learns from reading/studying to pass an exam is not the same as what one learns being out in the real world, applying it.

Knowing how the standard applies to the industry you are auditing is important and if I am not mistaken, is what Randy and qusys are saying. "Meat on the bones..." Having the background in the industry as well as the auditing experience is a lot different (and more desirable) than having the ability to audit but not knowing the industry (and how the standard applies to that industry.)