Career Path of an ISO Auditor

So, you’re looking for a career change?

A change that will use your experience and knowledge that you have gained over the years. You’ve made an excellent choice to become an auditor!

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So, now how do you make that change?
Let’s consider the following areas.

Becoming an auditor and have completed the first step of training:

Internal Audits are conduct by employees who have been trained how to auditor and they conduct audit within the company on behalf of the company.

Profession auditor work for certification bodies. There are no mandatory qualifications to become an auditor, but certification bodies are required to demonstrate that their auditor are competent.

So to become internal auditor or professional auditor

  • Where can this training now take you?
  • What opportunities are there out there, now and in the future?  

Training

Regardless of the type of auditor you are looking at becoming, the first requirement is always the training. Ensure that your course is provided by a certified recognized training provider. This means that when you do complete your course, you have a certificate that is recognized all over the world. Consider completing a Lead Auditor course as this will include the TL competency (Team Leader) and will ensure you have the training to be able to lead audits as well as be part of an audit team.

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Audit Area

The next step would be to consider which area or management system you would be auditing against. This may depend on your existing experience, exposure or interest to relevant areas such as quality, safety or environmental management systems. One management system can be selected or all three in our Integrated Management Systems lead auditor course. The disciplines to consider are,

  • ISO 9001:2015 Quality management systems
  • ISO 14001:2015 Environmental management systems
  • ISO 45001:2018 Occupational Health and Safety management systems



Application and experience

Now that you have selected your appropriate training course to support your career change and are in the process of completing the course or you have completed it, you can start applying what you have learnt. Completing the appropriate course is an essential starting point to improve your understanding of conducting audits in the management system area/s of interest. Now you can get on with applying your knowledge and gaining audit experience

Career Path of an ISO Auditor

There are various different career paths that can be taken which all provide rewarding and challenging career options.

1. Internal auditor

The role of an internal auditor can include the:

  • Management of audit programmers/schedules
  • Management of internal audit teams
  • Conduct of audits to review the organizations own systems
  • Completing audit reports
  • Reporting audit results to management and staff
  • Essentially an internal auditor reviews the internal system of the organization they are auditing and conduct the audit on behalf of that organization.

2. Certification auditor

From a different perspective, certification auditors are conducting audits on behalf of a certification body to determine whether the organization is compliant (or not) to agreed criteria which is normally an international standard such as ISO 9001 Quality management systems or ISO 14001 Environmental management systems.

3. Legislation auditor

Sometimes an auditor will be employed to conduct audits against stated legislation. This is normally conducted through regulators or government departments. This legislation will be the criteria that the audit is conducted against and may include Health & Safety legislation or environmental legislation.

4. Supplier auditor

Supplier audits can also be referred to as 2nd party audits. When suppliers are contracted to provide specific goods or services, there is normally an Agreement or Contract of Requirements. A Supplier auditor will conduct an audit against this Agreement or Contract to determine compliance has been met or not.