Hello. My name is Teresa, I am a law student interested in pursuing a career as a Private Investigator once I have finished my degree. Can you give me some advice on how to start working towards this profession? Your site is great, I really liked your “unpleasant surprise prevention” tests. I also liked the articles on anonymous harassers and violent partners, but I have to point out one thing: do you not think that the unfaithful partner test is a little too obvious ?

Dear Teresa, to embark on a career as a private investigator you should start off by working within an agency, an experience such as this should be able to teach you a lot about this job. There are numerous theorical, practical, distance learning or obligatory attendance courses that you could do but there’s nothing like direct experience. Allow me to make a personal consideration: it is very useful that you are studying towards a degree in law, but it won’t be very useful for you for this profession: it would be like if I were to get a degree in engineering only to then dedicate my time to dismantling and re-assembling car engines. Kind regards and best wishes for your studies.
Human Resources Manager – Octopus

P.S. Thank you for your kind words about our site, we will take your remarks into consideration. We would however like to point out the aim of our tests, which we can undoubtedly improve on.
They derive from the all-American structure of cataloguing any kind of behaviour to obtain analyses that are often too theorical, but useful in any case. Their function is simply to supply some points for reflection on the subject, we are aware that a test cannot give the answer to a problem but only supply its own solutions. On the other hand, recognising that you have a problem and deciding to face it already makes up 50% of the solution. We’ll conclude with two considerations: the partner infidelity test is obvious, even quite banal, due to the fact that infidelity itself is obvious and banal. On the other hand, we had to do some drastic “amputation” work that certainly make the articles regarding anonymous harassment, ex-partner harassment, the violent reaction of an employee who has been sacked and possible cons, seem quite banal. All of these subjects would necessitate hours of consultancy work on each specific case.

Published on: 24 Feb 2005