Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as an audit manager and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
An Audit Manager is responsible for organizing and overseeing all the internal audits by the annual audit plan as well as managing a team of auditors. This position oversees the review process and makes the required recommendations to change the policies, implement new systems and modify the employee's roles and team structures.
The essential duties of this position are identifying risks and managing them, producing reports that are highlighting issues and providing potential solutions, actively engaging with the senior staff to gain a good understanding of the business, supervising, coaching and developing junior audit members within the team, ensuring total compliance with the internal and external requirements.
Core Skills Required to be an 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 audit manager should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Verbal Communication:
Verbal Communication is the use of tones and language to relay a message; it aids as a vehicle for expressing ideas, concepts and it, is critical to the daily running of the business.
An Audit Manager portrays his/her image and that of the company by the way he/she communicates; strong verbal communication skills are vital for business development and forging lasting relationships with customers, suppliers, and colleagues.
Conflict Management:
Conflict Management is a situation where the interests, needs, values and goals of the involved parties interfere with one another in the workplace where different stakeholders have different priorities.
An Audit Manager must learn to recognize and deal with disputes in a rational, balanced and practical way through effective communication, problem-solving abilities and outstanding negotiating skills to restore the focus of the company's peace.
Interviewing:
Interviewing is an essential skill in making a sound hiring decision that seeks to find out the candidate's background, work experience, skill level, general overall intelligence, enthusiasm, attitudes, etc.
An Audit Manager ought to be equipped with the right techniques to handle interviews whether they are face to face or telephone as they can be grueling and intimidating to the candidate; clarity and calmness of tone and the atmosphere are ideal.
Knowledge of Company Processes:
Knowledge of Company Processes is the in-depth understanding of a collection of related, structured activities that serve a particular goal for a group of customers or clients who are valuable to the enterprise.
An Audit Manager ought to maintain consistency across the daily processed while keeping a keen eye on the overall plan of the organization by ensuring the company processes are performed and followed.
Managing at team:
Managing is the administration of an organization which includes activities of setting the strategy of an organization and coordinating the efforts of the employees to accomplish its objectives.
An Audit Manager must learn the art of creating corporate policy, organizing, planning, controlling and directing organization resources to achieve the aims of the policies formed while making decisions to oversee the enterprise.
Team Building:
Team Building represents various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within the different teams at the workplace.
An Audit Manager ought to provide team building activities to his team to cultivate better communication, morale, motivation, productivity and help employees know each other better as well as their strengths and weaknesses to be used in building a better workplace.
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 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.
Potential for Advancement:
The potential for Advancement is the ability to make something better by being more skillful, more efficient, and more useful to produce high-quality results.
An Audit Manager needs to invest in his employees by creating room for individual advancement that encourages stronger job performance because it positions the employees to demonstrate just how well they can perform their jobs through motivation and feedback that are critical to the employee performance.
Handling Stress:
Handling Stress is the skill to balance the requirements of the job and your abilities or available resources in performing it.
An Audit Manager needs to creatively learn how to schedule work according to the abilities of different individuals to ensure a balance that will not put an unsustainable level of pressure on the employees and cause them to accumulate work related stress.
Quality Management:
Quality Management is the management approach to the long-term success through customer satisfaction that directly involves the employees in the continual improvement of the daily tasks.
An Audit Manager should consider the quality management earnestly for the success of the business by improving the processes, products, services, the discipline and the culture in which they work under to warrant the improvement of profitability and productivity.
Hard Skills Required to be an 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 audit manager should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.