Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as an external audit manager and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
An External Audit Manager is hired from outside the company and made in charge of approving an organization's financial information. Under this position, both junior and senior accountants work together to complete the tasks assigned. These auditors include those who belong to the company and have worked on the records that are provided to this new auditor. External auditing firms are established to ensure that every company meets the expected standards of accounting.
Other tasks for this position includes identifying risks and managing them, Producing reports, highlighting issues and providing a potential solution, engaging with senior staff to gain a good understanding of the business, ensuring compliance with internal and external requirements.
Core Skills Required to be an External Audit Manager
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
An external audit manager should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Teamwork Skills:
Teamwork is the process of collaboratively working with a group of people with an aim to achieve a set goal within a business ensuring that the staff and management cooperate using their skills and provide constructive feedback.
An External Audit Manager needs to exercise effectiveness and understanding in creating teamwork using the right techniques in an environment of trust and cooperation with the aim of increasing productivity, higher morale, and a fulfilled workforce.
Accuracy:
Accuracy refers to the closeness of a measured value to a known value or standard that is passed by the governing laws.
An External Audit Manager has to always be accurate with figures and data used and required in the office without any guesswork or estimations to facilitate precise and correct information in every department creating an authentic environment that will be respected by the workers.
Knowledge of Job:
Knowledge of Job is essential to every employee who needs to have a clear understanding of how their jobs fit into the overall organization to eliminate carelessness and laxity.
An External Audit Manager must be able to evaluate this criterion when selecting an employee and know the common descriptions of a person with either right or inadequate knowledge of the job early enough to either keep them or let them go.
Management Skills:
Management Skills are also known as leadership skills and involve planning, decision making, delegation, time management and time management to ensure optimum organization in focus and the technical of how and why of accomplishing tasks.
An External Audit Manager must understand the business organization, finance, and communication as well as the market and the relevant technologies used to help manage everyone as they work together in a group.
Appraisal and Evaluation Skills:
Appraisal and Evaluation Skills are services that allow employers to assess their employees? contributions to the organization for the period they have been working with them.
An External Audit Manager must creatively develop a robust evaluation process that includes the standard evaluation form, approved performance measures, guidelines for presenting feedback and disciplinary procedures to promote staff recognition and rewarding following a fair assessment and appraisal process.
Appearance and Grooming:
Appearance and Grooming are the way one presents themselves in a professional environment or the workplace with the aim of gaining positive impression and respect as well.
An External Audit Manager must be an example in proper grooming and professional appearance while ensuring all the workmates adhere to the basic guidelines presented for good grooming in the workplace that represents the company wherever they go.
Personal Relationships:
Personal Relationships is the relationship between individuals who have or have had a continuing relationship of any nature either professional or informal.
An External Audit Manager reserves the right to take prompt action if an actual or potential conflict of interest arises concerning individuals who engage in a personal relationship that may affect terms and conditions of employment and he should not also date a subordinate.
Problem/Situation Analysis:
Problem/Situation Analysis is the ability to solve problems and assess situations to know what kind of solution is required to calm it down.
An External Audit Manager should learn how to identify and analyze problems and situations as well as use available resources to resolve them constructively by reaching a consensus through looking at an issue in a professional, not personal way.
Role Awareness:
Role Awareness is the ability to be informed of your role in a given environment as well as understand the expectations placed on a position and to see how they are met apparently.
An External Audit Manager must assess, measure and quantify his employee's awareness of their roles to see if they are transparent about what is required of each of them and review what kind of results they are delivering from their understanding.
Knowledge Management:
Knowledge Management is the ability to manage knowledge and information that is presented to the company from different sources without overlooking any of them.
An External Audit Manager ought to creatively channel all the new information, tools, input, and methodology mean by actively practicing the art of knowledge management within the business by harnessing the organization's inherent wisdom's platform in one place.
Hard Skills Required to be an External Audit Manager
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
An external audit manager should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.