If you’re trying to find out where someone works, there are more search options than ever thanks to the internet and the amount of information people put online nowadays. Still, you can run into complications in your search. It’s tougher to find out if someone is working or not, and if the person isn’t currently employed, you could be looking for something that you’re not going to find.
Fortunately, your search doesn’t need to take long. The following methods can all help you quickly get more information on a person’s current employer and show you how to do a free people search.
Social Media
At this point, most people have at least one social media account, even if they aren’t a frequent social media user. Profiles can contain valuable information on where a person works, depending on how much information they’ve entered. Here are a few of the most common social networks:
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
You’re most likely to find employment information on Facebook or LinkedIn. Facebook encourages users to add their employment information, and LinkedIn focuses on professional connections, which means users are also likely to add their employer. Here’s how you can look up a user on either network:
1. Log in to your account.
2. Type the name of the person you’re looking for into the search bar.
3. Adjust the search filters if necessary to narrow down the results. You could try filtering users by location or through another method.
4. Click on the profile of the person you’re looking for.
Whether the profile will include the person’s current employer depends on if they’ve added that and their privacy settings. Some users set up their accounts so that only their connections can see their employment history.
It’s also important to note that LinkedIn logs who views your profile, which means the person will see that you viewed their profile unless you set yours to private viewing mode. This is a good idea if you want to browse discretely. Facebook doesn’t show people who viewed their profile.
Although Instagram and Twitter don’t include an employment section, users sometimes put their jobs in their profiles anyway. If you don’t have any luck with Facebook and LinkedIn, give the other networks a try.
Search Engines
Sometimes a simple online search is all it takes to pull up a person’s employment information. If they have a unique name, you can try searching for just that. If they have a common name or you’re getting quite a few results that don’t match the person you want, search for their name and their location.
Although this can work well for finding out where a person works, it’s especially useful if the person is a freelancer or a business owner, as they may have their own website related to what they do.
Get creative with your search terms and use all the information you have on the person. For example, if you know they went to a certain school or belong to a specific organization, including those to improve your search results.
People Search Websites
There are quite a few people search websites out there that pull up a variety of accounts and public records related to a person. Pipl is one of the more popular options. You can search by only the person’s name, or you can search by name and location for more accurate results.
Even if you don’t get a person’s employment information through Pipl, it may put you on the trail of social media accounts or public records that have the information you want.
Conducting a Background Check
For the most accurate information on a person, you should conduct a background check. The problem with this method is that you’ll need the person’s Social Security number. If a person is willing to give you their Social Security number, you could probably just ask them where they work instead of going to the trouble of searching for it yourself. However, you can conduct a public record search and look at their background and you don’t have to know their social security number, only if you want it to be NCRA compliant.
Still, this can be a useful option if you’d like to verify employment information that a person has given you. If this person is someone you’re considering renting a property to, going into business with or hiring at your business, they should be willing to provide their Social Security number.
Hiring a Private Investigator
If you really need to get information on where a person works and you’ve exhausted all the above options without any success, then it’s time to look into private investigators. A skilled private investigator shouldn’t have much trouble finding where a typical person works, as the investigator can simply tail them during the day.
Private investigators also have methods that allow them to see if a person has received wages and the business that paid them the wages. This information can be hard to come by for most people, but private investigators can get it more easily.
When you talk to the private investigator, make sure you go over what happens if they can’t get you the information you want. Reputable private investigators will usually have no problem refunding the money they charged you if they can’t get what you want.
If you’re looking for a typical person who works a 9-to-5 job and has put some of their information on social media or other websites, you probably won’t have much trouble finding out where they work online. It can get a bit trickier with people who try to keep their information private and those who don’t work traditional jobs, such as freelancers. That’s when you may need to break out the big guns and hire a private investigator.
Don’t forget about talking to friends and acquaintances of the person you’re trying to look up, either. Sometimes finding the information you want is as simple as asking the right person. Go through a few different methods and one of them will likely turn up the employment information.
