Top 15 Senior Auditor Skills to Stay Top of Your Career

This post provides complete information and list on the important senior auditor skills and qualities you need to develop to excel in your job and career.

Please, read on:

The senior auditor is one of the most important and relevant auditors that can be called upon by any organization for the purpose of organizing an auditing exercise.

A senior auditor works with other auditors in order to carry out a successful auditing process which is geared towards putting the organization in line with relevant laws that concern the operation of businesses in the state or country at large.

Who is a Senior Auditor?

By function, a senior auditor is one hired to analyze the financial state of organizations, local, and state and even federal government owned organizations as well as individual clients.

Here are important skills and qualities you need to develop to be effective on the job as a senior auditor:

Strong analytical skills
Organizational abilities
Coaching skills
Good communication skills
Knowledge of job description
Knowledge of relevant laws
Good knowledge of MS office
Integrity and reliability
Good ethical skills
Ability to use your initiative
Objective thinking
Resilience under pressure
Planning skills
Sound judgment
Independence/teamwork.

Strong analytical skills

Auditing requires good analytical skills. It is important that for you to be in this job for a long time, you should be good with analysis embedded in the job you are called to do.

It doesn’t really matter how long it takes to arrive at a logical conclusion but you just have to do it.

If you can’t think, you can’t analyze, and if you can’t analyze, you cannot arrive at a logical conclusion to any issue that requires your attention.

This is the rule of being a profound problem solver in any business organization you work with.

So, the deal is this: think, analyze, and get the problem solved.

It is quite simple, but not entirely simple if you have to dig deep to analyze critically any issue you have to solve.

This is why you have to constantly improve your thinking ability.

Organizational abilities

Organizational ability deals with you being able to arrange activities and make sure that they are all in order.

You don’t just wake up and dabble into any activity; you have to have a routine created for several activities at your disposal and make a way for carrying out those activities.

That is why this skill is important to you as a senior auditor.

Auditing becomes tedious and underwhelming when you lack this skill.

Activities might be numerous but with proper organizational skills, you should be able to take on all the activities in no time.

Most importantly, when you are working with some group of individuals in this exercise, you have to be sure that everyone follows the routine you have put in place.

This will help in creating uniformity throughout the exercise.

Coaching skills

A senior auditor is meant to be a coach to other members of the team.

As a senior auditor in your organization, you should be blessed with a wealth of experience on the job.

The knowledge and expertise you have should be passed down to other members of the team through proper coaching.

It is through coaching that you are able to teach and intimate members of the team with relevant knowledge as to what their job entails and also some best possible approaches to the job.

When you are coaching the members of your team, you are indirectly helping yourself in the job, how?

The answer is simple: When you help junior employees improve on their knowledge base, they in turn help to make your job a lot easier, more than you can envisage.

Good communication skills

A good senior auditor does not joke with communication, especially when you have people to work with in this job.

Most of the people you will work with are members of your team and communication helps create mutual understanding between you and the team members.

As said earlier, you must be able to coach them into perfection to help make your job easier.

How is coaching possible without communication?

You need to tell members of your team what they ought to know and ensure there is feedback from them about whatever you have taught them.

It is understandable that communication cannot be done without.

So the earlier you start communicating efficiently, the easier your job becomes.

Knowledge of job description

There are many other roles in the auditing field. Though they have similarities in pay, description, and mode of operation, yet they are not the same.

This is why you should understand the details of your job.

It is important for you to know that you are only judged from the contents of your job description.

Anything you want to do outside your job description will be a plus to you but not the yardstick that will be used to evaluate your effectiveness on the job.

So, take time to study your job description and know what is required of you on daily basis.

This will help you channel your energy in being productive in the areas expected of you to do so.

Remember that your job description is the basis for your employment.

Knowledge of relevant laws

Before you venture into auditing, you should be sure that you are aware of the relevant state and federal laws which guide the mode of operation of all industries within the state and the country at large.

Knowledge of these laws should pave way for whatever your auditing exercise should be.

Playing an advisory role as a senior auditor of a firm puts you in a position where you cannot afford to do without knowledge of prevalent business and company laws of the geographical areas where your company is located.

This is true because as the senior auditor, you should have more knowledge than most of the other auditors in the organization.

Also, it is on the basis of the knowledge of these laws that you will be able to evaluate the system prevalent in the firm where you work.

This means that you judge your observation based on what the law says and not what you think.

Good knowledge of MS office

Microsoft suite offers you a wide range of services to work with. This is important because there are different aspects to your job and Microsoft suite provides you with those relevant options to choose from.

This helps you to do your job well with more accuracy and efficiency.

The documents you may produce may come in different forms like word documents, presentation, and data management, etc.

This is taken care of with the existence of useful Microsoft applications such as the word processor, database, and presentation software tools.

So, when you learn how to use these software applications, you are leveraging on the power of digitalization to hasten your job while ensuring quality output, which is the most important thing for you to achieve.

So today, make up your mind to learn the different applications available in the Microsoft Suite.

Integrity and reliability

Nothing sucks in this field more than been associated with unreliability and lack of integrity.

It mars your job and makes people find it difficult to use your services in the long run.

This will certainly hit your career badly and put you out of favor with people.

You should make sure that during auditing processes, you are not partial or have anything to hide.

Your desire should be to be free and fair in your assessment of the system.

You shouldn’t attach emotion or sentiments to your job in any way or form.

Also, make sure that the people you are working with understand the importance of being neutral in their job execution.

This is because if something like that happens, it will be assumed that you are not in control of your team.

Good ethical skills

Professionalism should be your watchword in this job. You should be associated with everything good in this job, not the opposite.

There are good work ethics and there are bad work ethics.

You have to choose the good work ethics to have a good personality in this career.

Professionalism in this job is what you should hold on to.

You don’t need to find yourself in any situation that can dent your image or personality.

This is simply not going to be easy but you just have to navigate your way toward being a professional in this job.

As you do that, also try to make your team value good work ethics.

Ability to use your initiative

Two things are important in this job: getting the desired result and doing so within the stipulated time.

These are the two things you should be able to do in the course of your job, not just in one day but all the time.

This may demand that you think outside the box and do something different from what is obtainable.

You should be creative in your activities and execution of your job.

You don’t have to stick your neck in doing the same thing the same way all the time.

If you truly want to meet up with the target of delivering a good work at the stipulated time, you just have to look for a more convenient and effective way of doing that.

Doing the same thing the same way always is a sign that you are not progressing in your career as a senior auditor. You may soon be out of job.

Objective thinking

There is no gainsaying that the more objective you are in your thinking and analysis, the more you are likely to think out something brand new and awesome to the ears of people out there.

First, you must train yourself to be a good thinker. You should be thinking and looking forward to achieving something different from what others have achieved in the past.

You just have to keep thinking objectively.

Absence of thinking leaves you with the choice of assuming things.

Assumption as you know comes with a lot of risks, which you may not expect or handle.

It is very good that you don’t do with assumptions, rather think and experiment with what you have thought of.

Resilience under pressure

Pressure is almost inevitable in your job, especially if you have quite a short timeframe to deliver your job. It can be mentally stressful.

However, no matter unavoidable stress can be, it can be managed.

Managing the stress you are facing is one way to build resilience in your job and building resilience will help you a lot in your career. Resilience is not built in one day, but over time.

Failure to manage stress and build resilience will definitely lead to a case of diminishing return where you reach your peak and start experiencing downturn in your efficiency on the job.

This is what happens when you are not capable of managing pressure in your job.

Planning skills

Planning is one sure way of delivering an excellent job.

Planning is necessary if you are to organize a successful auditing process in any organization regardless of how complex the whole process might be.

This is a sure way of making the whole auditing process a smooth one.

When you are able to list down the whole activities or processes that will be involved in the auditing process, the next thing to do is to make a good plan on how to take on those activities without notably disrupting the normal flow of activities in the organization.

Remember time is precious to every organization.

After that, divide the job in stages and handle it as a project.

Remember to carry your team along in the planning process so that each of them will know what to do at every point in time.

You can also get their inputs in the planning process.

Sound judgment

Making sound judgment is one area that many senior auditors tend to fail.

This is because some do not take their time to analyze the data/information they have at their disposal.

This is quite telling when they write their reports and recommendations.

So, in order to escape being rash in judgment, take your time and do your analysis well to ensure that your analysis is all encompassing, leaving no detail behind.

This is the way to make sound judgment.

Remember that your judgment is based on your observation and data made available to you.

Independence/teamwork

Working independently and working with a team are two different things, but you need both to be good in your job.

Working independently entails your ability to work with little or no supervision.

It means you should be able to organize the entire auditing process with full confidence that there won’t be unnecessary interruption or hitches.

On the other hand, working with your team entails your ability to incorporate the efforts of other team members to make the auditing process a success.

Success is not entirely down to your individual brilliance or intelligence.

You need the efforts of others to make a head way in this job.

Senior Auditor Skills for Resume

If you are writing a resume/CV for the job of a senior auditor, you can boost its effectiveness to get you an interview with the recruiter/employer by adding a compelling Skills section to it.

You can create an effective Skills section for your resume/CV by applying some of the senior auditor skills and qualities that you have.

With a Skills section that shows that you have what the recruiter/employer requires for success on the senior auditor job, your chances of getting the job are higher.

Conclusion

A senior auditor works with a wide range of people such as government firms, individuals, and private firms.

The senior auditor needs both the simple and complex skills and qualities discussed above to administer his/her job well.

So, the thing is simple: how far you can go in this career will be determined by how many of these skills and qualities that you have developed.