Maximizing Employability
in Conformity Assessment

As anyone reading these words well knows, the conformity assessment field offers unique career prospects for professionals of various backgrounds and experience levels. Whether you are a quality manager, a food safety practitioner, a contract auditor, a consultant, a technician, or anything in between, there are always new horizons to conquer and new opportunities to pursue.

To take advantage and make the most of your career, however, you need to be ready to seize those opportunities when they arise. Here are four best practices to keep in mind as you actively navigate your own personal career pathway.

Best practice No. 1: Always be learning

Excellence always starts with the pursuit of knowledge. And it never ends.

There are no shortage of exceptional training providers that can help keep you current on the language of standards and provide practical insights into how that language can be applied to registered organizations. For auditees or auditors, learning from experienced trainers can keep you aware of the perspectives of thought leaders and put that knowledge into practice.

Training courses can also help you understand the possibilities of different career pathways that you may not have previously considered. Many students go into a course with a certain understanding of conformity assessment (for example, from the perspective of a quality professional at an audited organization) and come out of it with an interest in third-party auditing, consulting, or training as potential future careers.

Best practice No. 2: Burnish your credentials

Not everyone holds pertinent credentials and certifications, but those that do have a big advantage when it comes to employability.

Personnel certification can help you stand out from the pack, demonstrating not only your competency, but also the kind of personal focus and drive for improvement that every organization wants to bring on board.

Certification can mean increases in salary of up to 100 times the amount of the annual fees. Certification programs exist for auditors, technicians, engineers, practitioners, and many, many more, all at different levels and grades based on experience.

Best practice No. 3: Focus on risk

There are two sides to this best practice.

On the one hand is the personal dimension of risk, which means anticipating changes in the basic environment of the conformity assessment industry. Based on the context of your career, consider building a personal risk register to identify the greatest threats to your current position, and then take action to mitigate those risks. Think broadly and deeply, just as you would with a risk register for an organization with which you might work.

There is also the strategic consideration of risk that is increasingly a focus of organizations and the framers of standards such as ISO 9001. Make sure to understand these evolving perspectives on risk and how they apply to conformity assessment. When it comes to risk, professionals who succeed going forward will develop competencies around proactivity as opposed to reactivity. Whether you manage systems for an organization or audit those that do, real value comes from developing and/or identifying proactive-based processes that eliminate risk as opposed to reactive, downstream ones that merely mitigate poor outcomes. Being able to talk about these strategies, and more importantly show examples of how you’re put them into practice, will give you a leg up for future opportunities.

Best practice No. 4: Engage with colleagues

One of the trickier aspects of being a conformity assessment professional is cultivating community. In many cases colleagues are not available in a real-world setting to ask (and answer) questions, share resources, and learn about opportunities.

That is why Exemplar Global launched an expansive Community where members can interact about a multitude of topics, including standards, auditing, quality, food safety, and more. A focus on career pathways supports everything we do in our Community, so those who are seeking to maximize their opportunities will want to participate and build a robust list of professional contacts. Joining the Exemplar Global Community is a great investment in your future.