Career Overview: What I Do As a Private Investigator
There is so much more to being a private investigator than just sitting in a car with a big lens. Many investigators work with companies to conduct thorough investigations and legal investigations, often ahead of major business transactions. They are not looking for a Maltese falcon.
To learn a little about this area that transcends our perception of sneakers in pop culture, we spoke with licensed researcher Brian Willingham. Sure, there are private detectives that specialize in infidelity detection that can be seen in films, but Brian’s firm focuses on in-depth research on individuals, businesses, and investors that go beyond a few grainy photographs.
First of all, tell us a little about your current job and how long you have been doing it.
My name is Brian Willingham and I am a licensed private detective. I have been in business for 15 years this month (Happy Anniversary!). I am the owner of the Diligentia Group , which has been in business for over six years.
We focus on several areas of investigation, including in-depth research into the background of firms that are considering investing in or buying a company (to make sure they are not investing in fraud), and we assist lawyers in complex litigation cases. We also specialize in finding people who are hard to find. For example, we are currently working on a case, helping the family find their heirs from France. They lost touch with these heirs 40 years ago, and we just found a nephew living in Oregon; they never knew about him.
How did you get a job? What kind of education and experience did you need?
I chose my profession in a roundabout way. The vast majority of private detectives come from law enforcement, mainly through the state or local police force, or through some other government law enforcement agency such as the FBI, or from a military background. I kind of got into the profession.
Even though I passed an aptitude test in ninth grade that told me I had to be a private investigator, for several years I spent time following my passion for sports (only after I realized I would never go … be a professional baseball player). I earned a degree in one of the preeminent sports management programs in the country – the University of Massachusetts at Amherst – and worked for sports photography firm Major League Baseball and interned with the New York Giants football team.
Although I valued my time in the sports industry and did things that I could never do again (like flying an airship in the 2000 World Series), I quickly realized that there were hundreds of people willing to do my job for less. than I was. I also learned that once you took a position in the industry, you never quit, and that lowered my ambition. In 2001, I decided to join my father’s private detective business, and the rest, as they say, is history.
There are no special educational requirements to work in this profession. It would be nice to have a degree in criminal justice, but this is by no means a requirement. With so many niches in the industry and the industry changing so often, it is very important to get on-the-job training as a practitioner in your business.
What prompted you to choose your career path?
Like most children, I was fascinated at an early age by Sherlock Holmes, the Hardy Boyes / Nancy Drew mysteries, and the Magnum P.I. My dad was a private investigator, so it was definitely something that was always on my radar. In truth, I started in this business because I was at a crossroads in my professional career, but I quickly became interested in the business. I realized that you are constantly learning new things and it is hard for you to get bored because your workload is constantly changing.
What are you doing besides what most people see? What do you actually spend most of your time on?
Studying, reading, and writing are probably the three things I do the most. Based on the perceptions that people have, I’m pretty sure this is not what most people think private detectives are doing, but the most important components of what I do.
For any investigator, be it law enforcement officials or the private sector, most people don’t realize how much time and effort goes on behind the scenes. What may be on public display or in the final report is only a fraction of what actually happens. From hours of training to days of chasing leads, there is a lot of work that goes into the end result.
What other misconceptions do people often have about your job?
Let me count the paths. Ninety-five percent of the people we interviewed a few years ago believe that private detectives are breaking the law and are “shady”. Cinema and television, of course, did not do us any good, but the investigators did not go to meet them. Many researchers take pleasure in these delusions; For example, I believe that they harm the profession.
Some of the other misconceptions are not only shady, but include that private investigators regularly break the law and obtain information through illegal means. We are often asked if we will do anything illegal on their behalf, such as threatening someone or breaking into someone’s house and stealing tax returns. I am also asked if it is legal to hire a private detective, which puts us in the same position as hackers hired to illegally hack into a computer.
So yes, the general public has huge misconceptions about our business that can sometimes be difficult to overcome.
What’s your average uptime? Typical 9-5 thing or not?
It really depends on the circumstances. However, this is not a business where you find so many 9 to 5 jobs. The workload can be really volatile, and private investigators often have to work with time constraints, so you have to be flexible about your hours and have an understanding family.
Personally, I’m a morning person. I usually sit at my desk by 7:30 am, spend time with my family from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm, and then usually do some more work from 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm when the kids go to bed. But if you ask my wife and kids what my average day looks like, it is likely to be very different from their point of view.
I will tell you that since I started my own business, I have worked more nights, weekends and vacations than ever before, but I would not trade my own bosses for anything.
What personal tips and shortcuts have made your job easier?
I’m not sure who coined the term “mailbox zero”, but I’ve followed this practice for years to keep myself organized. If there is something in my inbox, I treat it as something to do, respond, or otherwise explore. If I have reviewed it or received a response, I archive it. Even though I receive hundreds of emails a day, there are usually only 10 to 20 messages in my inbox. Only a few times a year is my inbox actually empty, but it mostly serves as a secondary to-do list.
I also use a mix of technology, pen and paper to organize my tasks. I use Google Inbox to help set reminders, Todoist to help me with more intermediate and long term list items, and good old fashioned pen and paper for my daily to-do list.
What are you doing differently from your colleagues or colleagues in the same profession?
Private investigators as a group keep things secret, keeping their “secrets” to themselves. I don’t really believe in secrets. In fact, most of the secrets are not really secrets at all. I blog about most of my secrets and techniques . When I started blogging five years ago, I was one of the few researchers who wrote openly about it.
I am also extremely honest with my clients – and sometimes extremely honest, which is probably costing me some cases. If I don’t think we have a chance to answer any question the client wants to answer, I will tell them. Generally, I don’t think most people are willing to talk themselves out of work, but if I don’t really feel like I can help my clients with whatever budget or resources they have, I’ll tell them. It doesn’t help them, and the situation in which I don’t succeed doesn’t help me.
I also believe I have a unique skill set. I had a bit of luck with the timing when I joined the profession. Over the past 15 years, business has undergone changes in the amount of information you can learn about a person just by sitting at a computer. Information that could have taken weeks to develop can now be discovered in just a few hours. So I was involved in the business for a period that spanned two “generations,” so to speak, and I was able to grasp things from both sides. Typically, you will find investigators who are either well versed in information while sitting at the computer, or are proficient in more classical investigative techniques such as face-to-face meetings or the “boots to the ground” tactic. I was fortunate enough to be actively involved in both directions.
What’s the worst part of a job and how do you deal with it?
One of the biggest disappointments in this business is that work can be inconsistent and highly time-dependent. I have periods of time when I work 80 hours a week and those that are not so busy. And these busy and slow moments can happen week after week or even day after day. Again, much of the work we do is very time sensitive, so the ups and downs can come and go quickly.
Personally, I don’t have many things to do that go on for months and months, so I literally don’t have a two-week schedule from now on. When I started my business, I was worried about the weeks ahead, but now I am less worried. I’ve been in business long enough to know the work is coming.
What is the most enjoyable part of the job?
Two things come to mind. First, from a professional point of view, I am extremely pleased when I discover fraudulent information. Over the years, I have worked on a number of cases in which I assisted individuals or investors who screened potential investment data, only to find information that showed that the person under investigation had sufficient dark past. I was able to provide information that convinced my client to abandon the investment or abandon their investment. In some cases, these investments turned out to be massive scams, and my clients avoided millions of dollars in losses and even more headaches.
I am most satisfied with the times when I can bring families together, including children who have never met their father; parents who have never met their children; or, as in the case I mentioned earlier, find family members whose existence was not even known to exist. From a professional point of view, these cases are really difficult, as my clients often spent years searching before contacting me. It’s not always easy, and I donate more cases than I actually take on, but when the cases we take on end well, I am personally happy. When I can fill a hole in someone’s life that has been around for many years, it makes me the happiest.
How much money can you expect at your job?
The salary of investigators varies greatly depending on a number of factors, including where you live and your specialty. On the lower level, you might have observer investigators in very rural areas who are paid $ 15 to $ 20 an hour; then there are corporate white shoe firms where directors can be paid several hundred thousand dollars a year. And there is everything in between.
Is there a way to “advance” in your field?
Hard work and hustle and bustle that can be said for moving up the career ladder in any business. My best advice is to take on what no one wants to do, do it with enthusiasm, and do it well; it will definitely draw attention to you.
What do people underestimate or overestimate in what you do?
Interestingly, I think that what people underestimate and overestimate in relation to what private detectives do is the same thing: our ability to receive information.
At one end of the spectrum is a group of people who think private investigators have access to information at their fingertips, including the results of your most recent colonoscopy and the details of your tax returns over 20 years; they also think that we can use brute force to get people to give us information.
On the other hand, I think we are also underestimated. I was once told that private detectives are just an expensive Google search. Maybe this attorney was just using the wrong private detective, but nothing could be further from the truth.
I practice my craft and spend thousands of hours a year perfecting it. My job is to know social media mining tricks like a backdoor to identify someone’s Facebook friends, even if they are blocked. My job is to know that there are gaping holes in criminal records and how to fill them. I also know how best to approach a witness for questioning and when I can legally record this interview.
What advice would you give to those who want to become your profession?
The investigating community is a small, tight-knit community, and getting into this business is notoriously challenging. You really need to know the right people in your community. I followed them on social media and tried to establish relationships with some of them. I also join the message boards in the investigating community and actively participate in discussions. Most states have associations that you can also join and participate in.
As with most professions, you must show that you can provide something of value, or rather, have a skill set that no one else has. In that sense, using technology to advance investigations would be an interesting avenue that you could use to gain attention. For example, mining on social media or using drone technology or offering a cloud computing platform to deliver surveillance video to customers are ways to get attention.