At EJM Investigations we offer a wide range of services to private and corporate clients. Often the jobs fall under one bucket or the other – we don’t tend to trace missing persons for business clients, and fraudulent injury claims don’t tend to be something a private client needs us to look into.
Background checks are typically something we would carry out for a business client – looking into the background of an individual before they were hired, or investigating a company’s history before any major deal or merger.
And yet there may be times when a private client could make use of our background check service. Let’s look at some of the reasons you may wish to hire us to carry out background checks.
Hiring a long-term nanny
Hiring a nanny is a significant decision, especially if they’re going to be in your life long-term. You’re trusting this person to properly care for your child, at times when you aren’t around to supervise their behaviour.
Understandably, that can be worrying. It can be difficult to know whether the person you ultimately hire is the right person for the job, or whether they will be abusing their position of power to look after your child in a way that goes against your values, or worse neglecting them in some way.
Using our services, we’d be able to look into the employment history of any nanny you wished to hire, and verify that it was genuine. We could make sure references are accurate, and we could identify anything else in the person’s background that may be a red flag, including any undeclared criminal convictions.
It’s not a service that you would want to make use of for an occasional babysitter but if you’re hiring a nanny for a prolonged period, especially if they’re a live-in nanny, then you may want to make sure they’re a suitable choice.
Hiring a tutor
Very similar to hiring a nanny, the process of choosing a tutor is an important one.
You need to be sure that they are capable of carrying out the job, and that they are a safe person to leave with your child. Unfortunately while an older child may be more capable of reporting any problems back to you, they may not always do so, especially if the tutor were to threaten them or cause any trauma.
While these are very unlikely cases, again if you are hiring a tutor to work with your child(ren) for a significant period of time you may feel comforted if you’ve been able to look into their background in full, and make sure they are safe to leave with your child (and that they’re capable of tutoring them as well!)
Pre-nuptial checks
Getting married is one of the biggest decisions we can make in life. While divorce rates may be high compared to a couple of generations ago, that doesn’t mean marriages are something to be taken lightly.
You’re still entering into a formally recognised commitment that comes with certain legal and financial implications. If you marry someone and then decide you need to divorce them, it can be a costly process both in the short- and long-term, never mind the emotional pain of separation.
Basically, you will want to make sure that the person you’re marrying is who you think they are. And for most people that’s not a concern, and you can see the evidence of their past life to this point.
But some people may be more mysterious, or secretive about their past. Indeed they may have proposed marriage to you as a way of distracting you, and trying to make sure they can ‘tie you down’ before you find out their full identity.
If you have any concerns at all about your partner – whether they’ve been married before, or have significant debt, or anything like that – then our background checks could be extremely useful in either putting your mind at ease, or giving you the evidence you need to end your engagement and walk away.
Of course, all good marriages are built on trust, so our background checks would be carried out with complete distraction so that your partner need never know you were looking into them, if you don’t want them to.
Major building/trade projects
It might sound crazy, paying a private investigator to carry out background checks on a tradesperson before you get some work done on your home.
And to be honest, for 99% of projects it probably is overkill.
Yet not every building project is small or insignificant. You might be asking someone to carry out work that costs five figures or more.
If that’s the case, you may wish to know more about the contractor you’ve employed. Imagine paying someone a £50,000 deposit only for them to disappear as they turned out to be a scammer.
So if you are thinking about a massive project, and you want to know that the person you’re hiring is legit, let us know.
Signing up to an independent landlord
Many renters sign up via a letting agency, but there are still those who sign a contract with a private landlord too. And rent prices in modern years are often very high. So while a landlord might be doing checks on you, you might also want to do checks on your private landlord so that you know they’re not going to mess you around, especially with something as serious as the place you live.
You could find out whether they’re a trusted person, or if they’ve had lots of legal cases brought by past tenants. While finding a place to live can be hard, don’t just sign up for the first available option if you’re concerned.
These are just some of the ways in which hiring a private investigator to carry out background checks can be useful in your private life. It’s certainly not just a service for use by corporate clients. If you want to know more then give our team a call on 01772 334700.