Have you ever wondered what type of clients hire private investigators? With around 94,000 private investigators (PI’s) across the United States, it’s no surprise that a variety of individuals and businesses use PI’s to help solve their cases. Due to inaccurate TV shows and movies, some people think that only spouses concerned about a cheating partner or parents of a lost child hire investigators. However, most private investigators offer a wide range of services, including fingerprinting, private investigations, and background checks. Indeed, this means a wide range of clients hire them, depending on the services they seek. Keep reading to discover the types of clients who typically hire PI’s.
Business Owners
Whether they are hiring potential employees or establishing new business partners, business owners regularly hire PI’s to conduct background checks on these individuals. This provides concrete evidence on whether these potential employees or partners are trustworthy, reliable, and don’t pose a threat to their business. This may explain why around 96 percent of employers conduct at least one type of pre-employment background check, leaving just a small percentage left of businesses using other methods to evaluate people.
By hiring private investigators, business owners ensure their PI will do a comprehensive background check on a person. Thus, this full scope of information will help business owners determine whether this person is the right choice for their business.
Specifically, this may include the following checks:
- Identification
- Credit report
- Fraud detection
- Employment and Income verification
- Criminal record search
- Business assets search
Property Owners
Every year, an estimated 43 million houses are rented in the U.S. Whether they rent single family homes or multiple apartment buildings, property owners hire private investigators to determine whether or not applicants have a higher risk for missing payments, damaging property, or being evicted. Owners that fail to run tenant screenings on potential tenants can end up with damaged property, legal and financial battles, or even losing their property.
Indeed, private investigators can perform full tenant screenings to make sure you sign leases with trustworthy, stable individuals that will pay their rent on time and not damage your property.
PI’s may run the following checks:
- Identification
- Rental and Eviction history
- Credit report
- Fraud detection
- Employment and Income verification
- Criminal record search
Lawyers
Lawyers hire private investigators to assist with a variety of cases. For example, a lawyer may need a PI to uncover key information about an opposing party, interview eyewitnesses, and help handle court disputes. In other cases, lawyers hire PI’s to serve subpoenas or find hard-to-reach witnesses and plaintiffs. When lawyers have an overwhelming amount of cases, hiring a private investigator to gather crucial evidence for a case can be the key to helping their clients win their cases.
Human Resource Professionals
Human Resource (HR) professionals wear many hats, one of them being hiring reliable, qualified employees. To ensure those open positions are filled with great workers, HR professionals hire private investigators to run background checks on these potential workers. Based on the results, this helps the HR professionals better evaluate a candidate’s application.
PI’s run pre-employment screenings, which determine the following:
- Does this person have a criminal background?
- Does their resume accurately represent their qualifications and job experience? For example, PI’s will verify whether they earned their education and worked at the companies they listed on their resume.
- What type of credit do they have?
- What do past employers say about this candidate?
- Is this candidate a sex offender?
- Do they have a history of sexual harassment cases against them from previous companies?
PI’s can dig up this information quickly and accurately, which will save the HR and business as a whole a lot of time, money, and frustration by not hiring candidates that can harm their business and success.
Parents or Legal Guardians
For parents and legal guardians, the safety and well-being of their children is a top priority. Thus, when they need someone to watch their children, it makes sense to run a background check on potential babysitters or nannies. Indeed, parents and legal guardians hire PI’s to conduct a full background check on their children’s potential nanny or babysitter.
It’s only natural to want to verify that the new nanny or babysitter is trustworthy, responsible, and qualified to take care of children.
PI’s will check out the following:
- Is this person qualified to care for children?
- Do they have a criminal record?
- What do previous references say about this person?
- Do they have any sexual offenses on their record?
- Are they who they say they are?
We hope you enjoyed reading our latest article discussing the main type of clients that seek private investigative services. As you can see, private investigators offer a wide range of services to meet their diverse clients’ needs. If you need to hire a Florida private investigator, contact PATRIOT Backgrounds and Investigations today.
