The Essential Guide to Hiring a Private Detective for Effective Private Investigations

Background checks have become more and more popular over the last several years. They are used for a wide variety of reasons, ranging from seeing if a potential mate is telling the truth about his past to seeing if someone is fit for the highest national security clearances. Employers often use them, too. In this case, companies are usually trying to find out if there are any criminal records.

Simply put, it is a process of investigation done to find out about a person’s past. It lets you find out about potentially negative factors such as arrests, convictions, and even unsavory social media postings affecting the person. It also lets you confirm (or refute) someone’s claims about their marital status, places of residence, and more. A proper background check can even reveal facts about a person’s character.

Sometimes, people wonder about others mainly out of curiosity, or to satisfy a perfunctory rule that demands that a check be done. Leasing offices often get these checks on potential tenants, while individuals may idly wonder about a co-worker, neighbor, or someone else they know but are not romantically involved with.

An inexpensive, quick background check run through a website can reveal negative public records that are easy to find, but that’s all. The big problem is that there are ways for people to scrub the internet of negative information about themselves – and the more negative that information is, the more likely they are to scrub it.

Because of this, we do not recommend quick “Google search” checks for anything but idle curiosity. When you truly need to know about a person, we strongly recommend getting a proper, in-depth background check done by our professionals instead.

These are called for when it is actually important to know more about a person. The type of information that a client seeks usually varies depending on the reason for the check. For example, an employer will be more interested in criminal records, while someone checking on a significant other will often be interested in whether or not he or she is secretly already married. Of course, those in relationships also want to know if their partner or potential partner is a convicted criminal or a drug addict, too.

These background checks are also used by people who are vetting child care candidates, opponents in civil suits, potential business partners, and more.

For these, the legwork is done by our background check service. Reputation management services can scrub someone’s online presence, making it so that quick-check sites show nothing. Therefore, a private investigator doing a proper check will look elsewhere, such as in actual government-run criminal records databases, court databases, and other such sites. How much information will be found depends on the person being investigated. Someone who is “clean” will have no records in any criminal database, where someone with a long “rap sheet” will have plenty of them. Court records, which include civil actions, can also be very revealing.

Other sources that are checked include sex offender registries, credit reporting agencies, listed employment or business references, and even the subject’s social media accounts. It is fairly common for a person to present themselves one way in person, and a totally different way online.

In some cases, personal interviews with those who have worked with or lived near the subject may take place. This, however, is not always necessary. It is usually done when there is a need to learn more about the character of a person as well as his or her official records.

Here at Barefoot Professional Investigations , we don’t just look in Google’s results and hope for the best. Our background checks are hands-on, in-depth investigations that will reveal things about your person of interest that don’t show up in a casual search. You can rest assured that you have done your due diligence when you hire us to verify (or refute) someone’s background and investigate their personal character.To get started on truly finding out about your person of interest, contact us today.

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