Howdy ,

What advice would you give to a high schooler wanting to get into your line of work?

For context, within the past week, I've received three emails and letters (yes, real-life mail!) from local high schoolers wanting to know:

• What's a day in the life of a private investigator look like?
• What advice would you give to a high schooler looking to become a private investigator?

To answer the 1st question, I point them to this blog article I wrote last year: https://www.gravitasinv.com/8-hours-w-adam-visnic/.

And, of course, to my YouTube Channel (Adam Visnic, P.I.), which unveils the mystery behind private investigations.

For the 2nd question, I say this:

1. Job-shadow a private investigator for a day. Spend a whole day in the office, the field, or even with the "boring" stuff, like doing the books. (sorry, Excel lovers). If you like it, go on to the next step.
2. Learn about the court system and how to get public records. Understanding the avenues to get records is a skill that's never going away.
3. Learn OSINT or Open Source Intelligence. Public records can be considered OSINT, but also learning how to collect social media info, geographic intel, and more is the wave of the future.
4. Learn a programming language. Collecting all this online intelligence is time-consuming. I've dragged my feet on learning Python, which I've heard is an incredible place to start.
5. Learn people skills. Can you build rapport quickly? Can you get people to know, like, and trust you? This is probably the most indispensable of all the above skills.

Over to you.

What advice would you give to a high schooler wanting to get into your line of work?

Talk soon,

Adam