Being certified as an ISO auditor is fine from the standpoint of accomplishing something, but of course for most people the intent is to do this activity and be paid for it i.e. have it be a job.

So in this article, I will tell you about the process of becoming an ISO auditor while working as a contract auditor for a registrar.

The Registrars

The registrars are organizations whose job it is to issue the ISO certificates, and periodically assess the conformance status of the companies that they register. In other words, they send auditors out into the companies to try to determine whether or not the company (it is usually a company) is still in conformance with the standard.

So the auditor is the means of delivering that service, since the registrar needs to conduct audits and determine this. There is are two ISO standards as to how this happens: ISO19011 which is all about auditor selection and conducting the audits, and ISO17020 which is the “how to conduct the audits and be a registrar.” standard.

So the registrar sends the auditor out into the organization, the auditor conducts the audit and prepares a report and then the registrar issues the certificate and has the database of registered companies.

The Registrar Auditor

So an important job of the registrar is to find auditors, and then arrange their schedules so as to conduct the audits when they are needed.

In my case, I am a contract auditor for two different registrars. That means they work with me to determine which clients to go to and on what schedule, and I send them a report with a recommendation for registration, and if there are non-conformances, I tell them that too.

So if you are me, there is some travel, you conduct the audit, you do the report, and they pay you money, which is desirable.

Being hired by the Registrar

The registrars recruit auditors in various ways. In my case, I printed out a copy of my resume, a copy of my certificate, and a nice cover letter, and sent via snail mail a letter to about five of these. and two of them responded, and I am still working for both.

Sometimes auditors are referred to the registrar by the auditors. It is not unheard of for them to advertise in various ways. Auditor turnover is actually pretty high, because of the travel and most of the registrars are looking for auditors most of the time. When the economy is bad, and there are a lot of free agent quality managers in the marketplace, it is not unheard of for some of them to do auditing for awhile, for two reasons: It pays money, and also, it is an interesting job that is a very valuable skill to gain a lot of experience in this because it gives you exposure to a lot of different types of businesses, and a lot of different quality systems, and that is a valuable area of expertise to some companies who might hire you later on.

Being Hired by the Registrar

Both of the registrars I work for regularly gave me a phone interview, trying to understand my motivation, and trying to judge whether or not I had language ability and some level of people skills. The job of the quality auditor is to conduct the audit and do the report, but a third, unstated job, is to do this in a way that does not inflame the client emotionally. I will have more to say about this in a later article.

The phone interview is a determination of this, such as it is.

Once hired by the registrar, there is an audition process. In both cases I was sent out into an audit to work as the assistant to a “real” auditor, and that auditor assesses your auditing style and the extent to which you engage with the people in the business, to confirm that you are within acceptable limits in terms of personal skills i.e. not foaming at the mouth, and not sexually harassing anybody.

Training

Once hired, you also have to do some training on the registrar’s computer portal. Since I have two registrars, I need to know two computer portals, and these are developed by IT people and not by people in the office, which means that there are some nuances.

Despite annoyance, this portal is very important because the “product” of the auditor’s work is not showing up and having donuts with the clients, but the “recommendation for continued registration” and also the auditor notes which have to be communicated somehow.

By the way, this is not me. I never look this good, I never work in a cushy airport lounge and I don’t usually smile

This is a constantly moving target because the registrars themselves get audited, and are frequently changing the rules for this process, and also, every time Windows comes out with a new revision there is some aspect of this that won’t work, so there is a constant process of updates and revisions of all of this. One of the untold stories of this is that there is a lot of uncompensated time spent on learning or not learning these web portals, and some of us don’t really like uncompensated time.

Being Scheduled

Just because you are hired as an ISO auditor does not mean that you are being scheduled as an ISO auditor. The clients prefer to have the same auditor every year, because a certain amount of familiarity is good, and that is fine, but what that meant in my case is that it took a long time for me to be scheduled as a regular auditor. For one of the registrars I work for, I had one audit in the first year, and for the other, I was sent on about 20 audit-days worth of “observation audits” where I worked for a lower rate as an assistant for an experienced auditor before being sent on my own audits.

What that meant was that even though I was “hired” by the registrar, I was not a fully fledged auditor able to conduct audits as the lead auditor for about a year afterward. I understand that this was partly because of the cycle of this: Every three years, the registrars are busy with recertification audits because a lot of this system started in North American in 1992, so every three years, all of the companies that started in 1992 have to be recertified, and the recert audits are a couple of days longer, so the auditors are very busy in years like 2009 and 2012, but not all that busy in 2011 which was when I started.

So, some auditors that have started since me have actually been able to get started faster. They do pay you for your audits during the probationary period, but at a lower rate.

The Registrar Annual Training

Both of the registrars I work for hold an annual training. This is where a lot of quality auditors get into a room, they try to get everybody on the same page regarding the reporting requirements and that kind of thing, and you get to meet the schedulers.

In my case I showed up to the first one or two of these, leaned on the sales people and schedulers, and right after that, began to be assigned to audits. So you do have to basically let the schedulers know that you are out there and this was a way to do it.

PS: Can you possibly imagine anything as boring as a big room full of quality auditors? You know who I feel sorry for? The hotel who hosts these things. Can you imagine what it is like to have a hotel full of these people checking whether or not you have an up-to-date evacuation plan or whether the soap is arranged according to the specification?

Also, in order to maintain your certification, you need to do some sort of “continuing education”, and the registrars will give you a training certificate to do this. You also have to pay an annual registration fee, and that is not cheap. Also, you do need to pay part or all of the expenses associated with this meeting, and that is also not cheap. That is basically why I went to the first couple and don’t go unless there is some urgent matter that I feel the need to be informed about.

By the way, writing a blog and doing business counts toward your educational requirements.

The Auditor’s Scope

I should say something about this. Not just anybody can walk into just any business and carry on an intelligent conversation about the business processes. Therefore, the auditor has an auditor scope which means that the auditor is conversant enough in that business to carry on a conversation in it and intelligently conduct the audit.

Not just anybody can be me.

In my case, since I worked for the town newspaper, and as a “bioengineering technician” a.k.a corn detassler and the local railroad as a young person in the summers, my scope is publishing, some biotech, and transportation operations. I worked in the machine shop in the physics department in college, so I can do machining and audit machine shops. I was a chemistry major and worked in famous tire factories, with bulk handling and mixing equipment, therefore I have chemical mixing and chemical processing as a scope. This also carries over into polymer extrusion and molding, and also gets me qualified to do assembly, I worked for the world’s largest producer of carbon black for awhile, which is basically the same as a refinery, a continuous process with digital control systems, so part of my scope is in chemical processing and chemicals. Also, I have my side gig in a distribution operation, which means I can audit distribution, I developed and sold my own software at one point on the side, therefore I can do some IT and data processing operations, and since I do some consulting, I can also audit some consulting operations.

Also since I am a championship level beer brewer, I can and have audited beverages and bottling operations, and also any operation that has some fermentation or similar processes that require temperature control and growing tiny life forms. I also have a real estate license, and I can and do audit some property asset management businesses.

One of my registrars gives me a little written test every so often to validate whether I am qualified to audit the scopes for them. The other registrar I work for actually has someone that is qualified to do a given scope interview me over the phone in the unlikely event I need to get into another scope. I have enough work as it is.

Getting Paid

So now that I am an auditor I get paid by the audit, basically, and the unit of pay is the “audit day”. Normally I make a fixed amount, which is about 40 percent of what the company pays the registrar to have me show up and walk around. The reason for this is that they have the overhead, do the scheduling, and have expenses and I am okay with that.

My travel expenses are also reimbursed by the registrar, who extracts it from the clients. One of my registrars pays a per-diem for meals and sustenance. The other makes me turn in a regular expense report with receipts. This usually comes to the same, because the per-diem is the GSA rate which is about what it actually costs to have dinner at Ruby Tuesday and I don’t profit greatly from this.

One of my registrars also pays me an allowance for travel time. The day rate for that registrar is less than that for the other one, who pays me more per audit but not for travel. So I need to balance which registrar I work for, depending on the length of the travel and complexity of the audit.

Offsite Time

I should say something about this. Both of my registrars pay me for offsite time when I am the “lead auditor” but not when I am the assistant auditor. But, in reality, what with the audit planning and reporting I actually usually take that much time to do the offsite reporting so this is not a revenue source, but the income per audit calculation depends on this.

Also one of my registrars uses this as a negotiation method: The sales department sometimes cuts back on this in order for them to capture business. I don’t mind this too much but it affects my income per day calculation which is important.

My Economic Entity of One

So what I have to do is schedule my time. I have two registrars, and several consulting clients, and the amount I work needs to be preferably spread out throughout the year, I want to maximize my travel and audit efficiency, and I want to do interesting jobs and learn new things.

Not just everyone can or should do this.

When I first started, I accepted any audit they gave me, and so I ended up working in some hard-to-get-to locations, which are less desirable places to audit, and I accepted them gladly. Later I became more selective, but I still have a couple of those original clients still around.

The registrars for the most part give you the option of which audits to accept, and which to turn down, and that decision is normally made about 4 months before the audit, so you can sometimes schedule these in advance. If I need to schedule a vacation, or have a job with the other guy, I can block out my schedule in advance to reserve that week if I do it far into the future.

I do not ever cancel jobs at the last minute because I have the need to be dependable, and the schedulers hate the people that do that. People get sick, I occasionally do a fill-in audit just to be a good guy.

About half of my audits repeat year-after-year and none of these are in Miami, they are in someplace like Ohio, but they are predictable and I am fine with that too. It all pays the same. I am a 1.4 million mile frequent flyer, and I have seen it all anyway.

Pay Timing

I should tell you about this: The registrars I work with actually pay pretty promptly after the end of the audit, and both use direct deposit. But, some of the registrars, from what I understand, wait until the client pays them before they pay the auditor. That means that sometimes it can be up to 90 days or longer before the auditor gets paid for an audit, and that is a major source of annoyance if you are holding the bag for a lot of expensive airline tickets.

I will have more to say about this later on as well.

Benefits and Taxes

Forget it. I have to provide my own medical insurance, and also, have no paid vacation. There is a way to be an employee of the registrar, and have those things, but I have chosen not to do so and I will explain why in a later blog post. However, the pay is enough that I don’t care.

Also, keep in mind that the registrars don’t do any withholding for taxes, so if I do not put a little aside, I could end up having to pay the IRS.

This is only a problem in the US which has terrible social benefits. If you are European or Canadian, or Australian or German, it does not matter.

In the US this is the perfect job for a retiree that is on social security or a pension plan from a big company, and has medicare. It is also potentially the perfect job on the motherhood track who wants to work a few days every month as long as you have a partner to keep track of the offspring for a few days, and are part of some other benefit program.

Before this sounds terrible, keep in mind that I work maybe 175 days a year, and last year made just about as much take home pay as I did when I was a corporate drone, so I do get about 70 days a year “off” (minus paperwork time) so that has its merits as well.

I am okay with it at this point in my life. It is not for everybody.

The Bottom Line

At least as it applied to me, it was not easy to start working for the registrars, required some investment of time and energy to do this, and it did take awhile for it to take off.

However at this point, this is a fairly dependable, basically 40-50% of a reasonable annual income, when combined with consulting and training. I do get to see interesting things and processes, and I am learning a lot. Despite the travel, I am generally glad I did this because it gave me a few stories to tell.

So my forward program is to tell my stories.

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