Becoming an IATF 16949 Third Party Auditor

[CS1050]

The first action is to find a CB that will be willing to sponsor you, without that you cannot go one step further.
The CB that will sponsor you will guide you through the whole process.

Howard, How does one get a sponsorship from a CB? Can you share any recent experience?

 

[Jen Kirley]

Howard, How does one get a sponsorship from a CB? Can you share any recent experience?

Welcome CS1050!

You could contact them. I was recruited by my employer's auditor after many visits and thus, many sessions of being audited by her in the processes I handled (including Internal Audit). She liked what she saw and made arrangements to help get me in.

The demand for some disciplines is such that they may offer to send you to the school (but almost certainly without pay), although honestly I see advertisements for fully qualified auditors... which, in my view pretty much guarantees a perpetual shortage.

Although they would probably tell you to apply in the normal way, you can do searches for the registrar in LinkedIn and send messages to the people that come up. Sometimes the registrars post ads in there. Your success depends on a formula that includes what you have to offer despite not having the cert, and how badly they need it. In my case, I already had a Lead Auditor class for ISO 14001 plus a bunch of other experience (their qualification program needed experience besides auditing so as to qualify for business codes), so it was enough to get me in. I never did pass that silly IATF exam. After three tries I ended up getting sponsored to take a Responsible Care course instead, passed it with no problem and was on my way. The road to success is not always a straight line.