While the folks behind this Newsday article may still be a bit behind the times (example: far more than 15% of P.I.s are women - at least in the ranks of corporate investigators) it is nice to occaisionally see that the long running stereotypes about our industry are slowly being dispelled.

Companies like our own Caveat Research produce a highly technical, extensively detailed work product that demands a broad range of skills and institutional knowledge. Our clients, quite frankly, are not sultry dames, cuckolded spouses or long lost relatives, but rather attorneys and business-persons of the highest level of sophistication. They demand timely and accurate informational resources to support their decision-making.

Some clips from Newsday.com:

Professionalization of private eyes- Gumshoes are being replaced by high-tech wizzes, many employed by companies to prevent stealing of intellectual property

By James Bernstein, Staff Writer
Newsday
December 19, 2005

...Gone, both private eyes and security industry experts say, are the days of the trench-coated, fedora-wearing investigator, who always had a cigarette in his mouth - yes, it was almost always a he - and a line on a sure-bet horse.

"These days, there's no smoking in our office," said Francis Shea, president of Melville-based Alpha Group, an investigative agency that hired Gatta to spy on Nancy Kissel. "We look for a more educated individual and somebody who can sit in a boardroom instead of a bar," said Shea, who spent 15 years as a New York City police officer before starting the firm.

"I think [private investigators] have a long way to go because many of them are still saddled with that old image," said Vincent Henry, also once a city cop and now a professor of homeland security at the Southampton campus of Long Island University. "But in the last decade, there have been a lot of changes" in the industry. Technology and the Internet are now as much a part of the job as the old Yellow Pages and notepad...

...Kroll Inc. of Manhattan, now one of the country's largest investigative firms, has about 3,600 employees worldwide, up from 300 as recently as 1997, said Jeremy Kroll, the company's managing director and son of the founder, Jules Kroll...."It's a much more legitimate, mainstream corporate service" that agencies are providing these days, Jeremy Kroll said.

Indeed. Check out the full article here.

-- MDT

Labels: Kroll