Today’s post is a guest post by Mike McKerns, SPHR, HR Insights Editor-in-Chief. This piece originally appeared in Advanced Resources HR Insights Magazine.

In my column in the previous issue of HR Insights, I offered suggestions for new ways to bridge the skills gap.  If you read that, you may have already begun planning for how to address the issues that have challenged your recruiting efforts over the past several years. (And if you haven’t read it, you can read it here or access back issues by subscribing here!) Estimates about the size of the gap vary widely, but most experts agree that it will only widen in the near future. The time to act is now.