How to recruit, hire and train an auditor

Part 2: Hiring

If you are an audit program manager that is training a new auditor from another department, treat them like a new hire!

Once you have identified someone that you want to “hire” as an internal auditor, your next step should be to develop an “Onboarding” plan for them with their boss. If you are hiring someone that will be a dedicated auditor, please ignore my quotation marks above. In most companies, however, the internal auditors are volunteers that report to another hiring manager. Therefore, as the audit program manager you need to get a firm commitment from the auditor’s boss with regard to the time required to train the new auditor and to actually perform audits on an on-going basis.

The Trans Siberian Orchestra is a must see–especially if you can take you family to see the performance live.

Winning Over the Boss

In my previous posting I said that, “The biggest reason why you want to be an auditor is that it will make you more valuable to the company.” The auditor’s boss may or may not agree with this statement, but the boss knows that the salary is coming out of their budget either way.

Therefore, talk with the auditor’s boss and find out what the auditor’s strengths and weaknesses are. Find out which skills the boss would like to see the auditor develop. By doing this, the two of you can develop a plan for making the auditor more valuable to their boss AND the company.

Making Re-Introductions

Ideally, auditors are extraverted and they have been with the company long enough to know the processes and process owners that they will be assigned to audit—especially if they will be auditing upstream and downstream from their own process area. In the past the auditor was a customer or a supplier, but now the relationship with a process owner will change. Auditors are required to interview process owners and this involves asking tough questions that might not be appropriate in the auditor’s normal job duties. Therefore, as the audit program manager, you should re-introduce the auditor to the process owner in their new capacity as auditor.

During this re-introduction, it is important to make three points:

1. the auditor is going to be trained first,
2. you will be shadowing the auditor during the audit, and
3. the auditor’s job is to help the process owner identify opportunities for improvement.

By making the first point, you are reminding the process owner of the scheduled audit—well in advance. You are also informing the process owner that this auditor will have new skills, and the process owner should have some tolerance for mistakes that new employees make. You might also mention that you would like to get the process owner’s feedback after the audit so the auditor knows what areas they need to improve to become better auditors.

The second point should put the process owner at ease—assuming the process owner has a good relationship with you as the audit program manager. It is important to be descriptive when “shadowing” is mentioned. Both the process owner and the auditor may not understand the process or the purpose of shadowing. The following blog posting might help with this: “How do you shadow an auditor? Did you learn anything?”

The third point is the most critical step in onboarding a new auditor. For an auditor to be successful, they must ADD VALUE!

As an auditor, you cannot pretend to add value.

The process owner should know their process and they probably know which areas are weakest. The audit program manager should encourage the process owner to list some specific areas in which they are having problems. Ideally, the process owner would be informed of this need prior to the re-introduction. Then the process owner can be better prepared for the meeting, and hopefully they will have a few target areas already identified. Targets with associated metrics are the best choice for a new auditor, because these targets reinforce the process approach to auditing.

Next Steps

Once your new auditor has been re-introduced to the process owners they will be auditing, you need to begin the training process. As with any new employee, it is important to document the training requirements and to assess the auditor’s qualifications against the requirements of an auditor. Every new auditor will need some training, but the training should be tailored specifically to the needs of the auditor.

The training plan for a new auditor should include the following:

1. a reading list of company procedures specific to auditing and external standards that are relevant;
2. scheduled dates for the auditor to shadow another experienced auditor;
3. scheduled dates for an experienced auditor to shadow the auditor during the first two process audits (upstream and downstream);
4. goals and objectives for the internal audit program; and
5. any training goals that the auditor’s boss has identified for the auditor.

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If you are an audit program manager, and you would like to improve your own competency, please contact me to learn about a new advanced course specifically for audit program managers. I am teaching a course with Brigid Glass. The course is designed specifically for audit program managers—not for inexperienced auditors. It will be a two-day course, and we are offering the course in three different cities: San Diego, CA (April 11/12), Orlando, FL (April 15/16) and Las Vegas, NV (April 17/18). Please Contact Me if you would like to learn more about the course.

I am also teaching a one-hour, audio seminar with FX Conferences on January 9^th:

“Are Your Suppliers Qualified? Prove It.”

This seminar will cover the areas of supplier qualification, supplier evaluation and supplier auditing. We already have a large number of companies signed-up for the seminar, and I am looking forward to having you join us.

This blog started as a single posting, but I realized that the blog was much too long. Therefore, I split the blog into three separate postings. This post is “Part 2 of 3”. The final part in the series will be posted tomorrow–December 24, 2012.