Confidence is key, whether you’re speaking in a board room or with a colleague on your way out of the office. The more confident you appear, the more willing people are to follow your advice and typically more opportunities will come your way. However, do you ever find yourself wishing you could portray the easy, secure professional you aspire to be?

There’s no shame in not feeling like you’ve reached the top of your game! As a staffing and recruiting professional, just like any individual, working hard to constantly improve is what makes you a valuable team member, and if you feel your confidence needs a bit of a boost, here are a few tips. Sometimes, you may feel secure in your decisions and what you are trying to communicate, but somehow fail to convey that confidence to other people. So, if you feel your confidence needs a bit of a boost, here are two tips.

1) Mentally rehearse.

Tripping over your own words can immediately take away from the message you are trying to convey – it doesn’t matter how important your words are – even if you’re saying you invented sliced bread. If you’re having a pre-scheduled meeting with someone, consider mapping out a few talking points and practicing sentences that are key to your delivery. Practice will help you smooth out the kinks and allow you to feel more secure about the message you are communicating. Remember, you don’t have to repeat yourself word-for-word, just feel as if you know the right method and the proper transitions from one idea to the next. This will really help you when you’re trying to communicate to an important client at your firm or when you’re trying to convince a potential job candidate to consider a position you’re trying to fill.

2) Place emphasis on first-hand knowledge.

Regardless of whether you are discussing a work issue or conversing casually with someone, it’s best to stick to topics you’re comfortable with. You’re able to come off as a thought leader and will feel more confidence because you’re not taking a shot in the dark about something. If the topic of conversation does go into areas that you don’t know well, it’s better to be upfront and say that you “haven’t read that article yet” or are interested in learning more. Confident people don’t act afraid about a lack of knowledge on a subject matter, they are willing to admit their ignorance and learn more. When you are talking to a client about their industry, make sure you have researched everything you can about the business beforehand. Ask questions if you’re unsure about the clients needs. A client would  most likely rather have you ask questions and receive the right pool of potential candidates than receive workers who are not the right fit.

Keep a positive spirit and use these tips and your staffing know-how to help you get an edge in the industry. By boosting your confidence and using your high-quality staffing software to gain insight into hiring trends, you can grow and succeed in the industry.

It’s not a surprise that job seekers aren’t combing newspapers for help wanted ads, and people have pretty much forgotten many job boards, but did you know that a rising number of job candidates are even skipping LinkedIn?

A Comscore study from 2011 found that 77 percent of job seekers are now using their mobile devices and carefully calibrated applications to find available positions. CMS Wire reports that the number one reason job seekers are using mobile applications is the ability to quickly react to a new job posting. That reason is followed by the ability to job search anywhere and at any time, and another 17.65 percent enjoyed the discretionary ability of browsing online job boards.

Not surprisingly, the majority of job seekers using mobile devices to conduct searches are part of the younger crowds. Millennials are seeking entry-level positions and college-graduate level jobs and make up 24.8 percent of all mobile job searches. Geography seems to be another distinguishing characteristic, as the survey found that an astounding 20.9 percent of all mobile application searches originate from Manhattan. Meanwhile, technology jobs only made up 6 percent of searches – as finance and healthcare both beat out the industry with 8.3 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively.

It’s an interesting development. As a staffing professional, you already know that everything in the industry is becoming mobile accessible. Look at your own staffing software – it allows you to peruse job candidates, track their progress and make on-the-spot decisions so that you can excel at your job. So, it shouldn’t surprise you that as you try to find the best job applicant for a position, a job seeker is monitoring potential openings.

What does this mean for you? It means that your potential job candidates are more mobile-accessible than ever. You most likely will be able to contact them about a position via a mobile device – with an application, text, Tweet or email – and receive a quick response. It also may mean that your strategies for keeping tabs on the industry could be changing in the near future and become more mobile-based. We don’t know yet, but it certainly is an interesting time to be in the staffing industry.

As a recruiting and staffing professional, you’ve seen it all. From the potential job candidate who acts like the bee’s knees to the person who struggles to articulate a thought in an email. It’s the staffing industry after all, and everyone is after that next big professional break and they think you’re going to be able to give it to them. I’m sure you’re watching out for those job candidates who are stretching the truth, but are you paying attention to those who are trying to take on the role of the Big Bad Wolf and lie on their resume?

As you well know, lying on a resume is not as uncommon as many outside the staffing and recruiting industry might think. According to Statistic Brain, 53 percent of resumes and job applications contain falsifications. ADP has reported that 46 percent of employment, education and/or credential reference checks on job applicants have revealed discrepancies between what the applicant provided and what the source provided.

But, why do applicants lie? Obviously, lying on a resume is foolish. If you’re not immediately caught, you will be sooner or later and those lies will immediately get you tossed out the door. Still, some job candidates still feel that lying is there best chance at getting your attention.

When you’re reviewing a candidate’s resume, are you screening it for potential fibs to outright lies? You have a number of tools that can be used to check the validity of a job candidate right at your fingertips. Your recruiting software helps you manage the details of an applicant, check resume credentials, job history and other background details as it tracks his or her progress through the entire recruiting process. With your software system acting as your ‘fact-checker’ you can more easily determine the details that are the key to catching a liar. Because of the massive amount of talent you deal with on a daily basis, it can sometimes be hard to connect the dots, which is why having a software that enables you to effectively grow, track, and manage your candidate pool is critical.

With that in mind, here are the top three things job candidates are likely to lie about on their resume that your recruiting software can help you catch:

1) Employment gaps.

Forbes reports that the most common resume lies involve playing with employment dates to hide gaps. This can be because a person is trying to hide being fired, a period of job hunting or even an embarrassing prison stay. Women may even stretch the employment truth because they believe leaving the workforce to start a family could be viewed negatively by potential employers. You can use your staffing software to better track employment dates and see if there are any inconsistencies that might pop up.

2) Experience.

It’s not uncommon for a job candidate to embellish the truth on a resume. After all, the entire purpose of that piece of paper is to get someone to make a call. However, when embellishment stretches into a grey area and the candidate can’t back up his or her claims, there are problems. You’re trying to fit the person to the right job and if a worker lies about his or her credentials and the lie isn’t caught, the resulting situation is going to be bad for everyone involved.

3) Certifications or degrees.

It’s such a simple thing, but the news doesn’t lie. Many people, even chief executive officers (CEOs) in charge of global companies, have been caught lying about the degrees or certifications they may hold. It’s an easy thing to check for and can help you immediately cross someone off the candidate list.

At the end of the day, you want to place candidates or employees that will serve the needs of your clients and reflect positively on your staffing and recruiting expertise. Using all of the tools at your disposal to find candidates that meet both of these requirements is just plain good business sense.

The job market is on the mend and that means employers are once again looking to make some hiring decisions in the near future. After all, many businesses have just completed their annual budgets and are poised to stimulate job growth, fill empty positions and flesh out departments.

According to Right Management Research, employers are more optimistic about the upcoming year and are planning on spending money to hire and develop talent. A global survey of more than 2,000 senior human resources executives in 14 companies found that a majority of U.S. executives believe the economy is in recovery – greater than the one-third who had the same belief for 2012.

“The prevailing caution of 2013 seems to have given way to a much more positive outlook for the year ahead,” said Gerald Purgay, Senior Vice President at Right Management. “Another shift appears to be wider recognition of the strategic need to invest in talent. We know that HR executives are tuned into senior management’s thinking and planning, and they’re saying that talent development initiatives have become a top priority as their organizations build for the future.”

And, it seems a number of companies are looking to gain new employees.

“According to our findings, a majority of U.S. employers (56 percent) see limited hiring in order to fill specific openings, and 31 percent say that hiring will increase only somewhat. Just 13 percent expect significantly more hiring prompted by strategic business needs,” said Purgay.

This survey isn’t the only indicator that the jobs market is on the road to recovery. A report from the U.S. Labor Department released the first week of February 2013 also showed noticeably stronger hiring trends. Experts are predicting the trend will continue, which is boosting employer confidence.

But complicating the need to increase hiring and invest in talent is the recognition that hiring is often a drawn-out process. Businesses are creating a number of new openings and management is looking to decrease the time and resources spent on identifying the right job candidate from a pile of resumes. What a hassle that can be! So staffing and recruiting agencies are uniquely positioned to help their clients reduce that ‘time-to-fill’ metric.

Your clients are finding themselves needing qualified workers to fill position gaps for contingent employee short-term projects, long-term contracts, as well as full-time employees. Here then are some suggestions for how you can gear up to handle more orders effectively.

First, leverage your professional expertise and cutting edge recruiting software to provide the best job candidates by establishing concise work-flows to handle job orders from first contact through client billing. This ensures a higher level of client service when your clients know that you have a dependable method for fulfilling their orders. Equally important, it reduces the time and effort you spend on filling those orders.

Second, an intuitive staffing program that is cloud-based, mobile-accessible, and secure can help your recruiting team respond faster and more effectively to both client and candidate communications. This is vital in today’s 24×7 business world.

Finally, tie everything in your staffing business together with seamless contingent employee payroll integrated into your recruiting software so that you further streamline your internal processes.

When a hiring boom is taking place, you want to make sure you’re able to appropriately handle the client shuffle and find the right candidate for the right job. Your staffing and recruiting software is an integral key to helping you achieve those goals.