As a private investigator you will have to work on various investigative assignments with individuals, companies and insurance companies. To provide these services you have the freedom to establish your own private investigations firm or alternatively seek employment from an established private investigations company. Although these two different situations will mean a slight variation in terms of the duties involved from day to day, the basic private investigator duties are listed below.

Private Investigator’s Job Involves

Natural ability to identify criminal activity –  is a basic requirement. This means that you should be highly observant and focused to use various investigative techniques to uncover various criminal activities even when perpetrated under the most elaborate schemes.

Undercover operations – are one of the most common private investigations assignments. This therefore means that you need to have the necessary skills which involve fitting into a new environment and easily adapting so as to convince others. These investigations include acting as an employee, customer among other assumed identities during an investigation.

Surveillance assignments – are also among the most common private investigator assignments. Investigators have to collect a lot of evidence for their clients using various means such as photography, video recording and even audio recording. To collect the necessary evidence, shadowing the subject is a must. Maintaining a low profile during this time will keep the subject unaware of your presence and work to help you successfully collect the evidence you are after.

Background checks – might have to go as far as checking birth records to ascertain that a person is who they say they are. This is especially the case when working on missing person cases and tracking down long lost family members.

Basic investigative procedures – investigating suspicious behavior either in the workplace, in insurance claims or even at home. You will need to follow up on all leads on suspicious behavior so as to obtain the necessary information.

Work on divorce cases – as a private investigator you will also have to work on divorce cases as well as child custody assignments. In such cases understanding the position that your client is in will provide a lot of help when it comes to completing the assignment with the right dedication and focus.

Take the time to summarize all the evidence collected – when all the investigative work is done, the private investigator will have to take the time to summarize all the evidence collected and their notes into a simple format that their client can understand. Report writing is a highly important part of a PI’s job as it is the end product of the entire investigative process.

The above skills are a must for a private investigator job description resume. They comprehensively describe the necessary skills for aspiring private investigators looking to conduct successful investigations.