A surprising number of jobs require some form of state certification or license, which can provide good information about that person. This can determine if the person actually has their claimed profession, some personal details, and very often it will show any issues the person has run into. So in some cases a person had been suspended and the reason will be identified. But even a worker in good standing will have some relevant details in their license.

If you are researching anyone where you know their profession, it is worth a quick Google search asking if that profession requires a license in that state, or in general.

The website Career One Stop has a great tool (https://www.careeronestop.org/toolkit/training/find-licenses.aspx) that lists out all of the jobs requiring licenses and allows you to search by job title and state to see what kind of licensing requirements exist and where the public can look up an individual’s license.

Here is an example of using Career One Stop for searching a random profession. See the search function on bottom left of the screenshot below. The word “switch” is input in the keyword search and the chosen location is all locations.

The result from this search show various licenses available in different states and identifies the local government agency responsible for overseeing the licenses.

Clicking on one of the license names shows the following information about the job, the licensing requirements, and a website for the agency responsible for the process.

Clicking on the agency’s website brings us to the page below and it turns out there is an option for the public to look up licenses.

A search for a random last name brings up the following results. The database includes various different professions so even though we were originally looking at electrologists, the results show doctors.

Clicking on one of the names brings the following results.

That’s it.