CHRISTUS Health, Riverdale, Georgia

Augusta Health, Fisherville, Virginia

BHC HealthCare, Saint Louis, Missouri

Cottage Health, California

BJC HealthCare, Saint Louis, Missouri

Salina Regional Health Center, Salina, Kansas

CHRISTUS Health, Beaumont, Texas

Cook County Health & Hospitals System, Illinois

Health First, Melbourne, Florida

Sticking your neck out and taking charge of your career is no trivial matter. Whether that’s switching careers, going back to school or walking away from a j-o-b to start your own business, it takes a lot of guts. But guts will only get you so far. Once you build up the nerve and make the leap, you’re no more than 5 percent of the way there. You still have to succeed in your new endeavor, and trying to succeed is when your worst fears (the ones that made you hesitate in the first place) will come true.

Before I started working in health care, I'd always felt very strongly that I never wanted to work in health care. Please don't misunderstand me; I've always had a great amount of respect for the field and those who work in it.

We all have a list of failures buried somewhere in the back of our heads. From my own experience, I could probably tell you about all the jobs I didn’t get in my long search, all the awards and scholarships I never earned back in college and all the articles I failed to write well (and not just because I’m my own worst critic).

Starting a new business, shifting to a new industry, looking for a job in a new city -- there are times in your career when you'll have to look outside the network you already have and meet a whole host of new people.

Recently I had a revealing conversation with the head of sales of a global marketing company. She was talking about her company’s vision of diversity. As someone who has studied diversity for a long time, what she said was music to my ears. She described how the market has changed and globalized over the last 10 years and how today it is unthinkable not to have diversity in our organizations.

Spring has sprung, and while the weather continues to warm up, hiring is already hot for those in health care. According to CareerBuilder’s Q2 2016 U.S. Job Forecast, 44 percent of health care organizations are planning to add full-time permanent headcount in the second quarter — exceeding the national average by 10 percentage points.