Why You Should Hire a Private Investigator For a Background Check

You might come across a situation where you will want to vet candidates for a new position within your or another company. You may even want to take it a step further than a background check and conduct a background investigation for a more responsible role where it is important to know just what type of person you are bringing into a company, and people’s lives, leaving them to have a major impact on certain decisions, policy or people.

With the best intentions, you may choose to obtain a background check on the individual in question and try to find a website that advertises this service. There are countless platforms online that offer ‘’cheap’’ or ‘’instant’’ background checks to their users. Do not be fooled by these types of services; they are getting their records from buying third party information and sending “bots“ to crawl the internet for free information. The results internet background checks come up with are incorrect and incomplete. With a background check this inconsistent, you might be better off simply googling the person’s name and seeing what you come up with. At Bitterroot Investigations we use databases stringently only accessible by state-licensed investigators and Law enforcement. The accreditation for this process includes a certificate of licensure from your state private investigator licensing agency, documentation proving an active state business license, documentation of current phone record information, and an in-person site visit to evaluate security risks. 

So, how do you ensure yourself of a properly conducted background check with comprehensive, accurate, and complete results?

Luckily, there are professionals highly skilled and trained in conducting background investigations: private investigators. A private investigator conducting a background check will investigate a person’s past in a professionally and with the client in mind. The private investigator will typically use a variety of sources to complete their investigation and give you the most accurate results one could hope for. Background check and or background investigations may include:

      Verification of personal identifiers such as date of birth, social security number. This information is vital to linking an individual to an identity, to verify criminal records, bankruptcy records and other public records.

      Verification of professional history by providing a timeline of previous employment and non-profit affiliations and board memberships. Should an individual be linked to one or more discreditable organizations, this should come up in the private investigator’s investigation.     Verification of address history – A good private investigator knows this is critical when trying to verify any history in civil and criminal cases. Some states do not allow access to pertinent records unless requested for in person, in the respected state. Private investigators in your state are usually part of a nationwide investigator network.

•        Criminal Records History check (both federal and state) This is one of the most important factors involved in a background investigation. To conduct a proper investigation, the private investigator will start his or her research through a law enforcement and private investigator access only databases. 

•       Bankruptcy Records – The private investigator will research this as it could potentially reveal highly important financial risk.    Civil Litigation (both federal and state) – A good private investigator will do his/her research at courthouses, in databases and at official government repositories.

• –       Verification of Professional Licensing– These records can verify a license nationwide and could also bring to light that certain regulatory action may have been taken against the individual if he/she is a professional license such as a doctor, nurse, accountant, attorney, etc

The points above are just a small part of the total investigation a private investigator will conduct for their comprehensive background check or background investigation. An online platform that charges $20 and provides you with an immediate result is not in any way reliable. There is simply no way that this online platform could have conducted physical research with the proper authorities and can have reviewed non-public records in this short amount of time, as access to these records is not just granted, this takes time and money! If an online background check cannot even provide you with reliable information when it comes to the most basic facets of a background investigation such as a criminal records check, surely you have better ways of spending your hard-earned money.

 If you want absolute certainty when you order a background check, contact a private investigator! For more information about the background investigation services that Bitterroot Investigations has to offer, please refer to our background check services page.