If you're among the 1.5 million young people who will be graduating from college in 2008, the job outlook is rosy. Employers are expected to hire 16 percent more new college graduates than they did last year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers' Job Outlook 2008 Fall Preview survey.

The Department of Labor has come out with its top 20 occupations with the highest expected growth through 2008. Many of these are no surprise. Eleven out of the top 20, for example, are professions related to the healthcare field, which is growing in leaps and bounds: audiologist, dentist, medical researcher, occupational therapist, optometrist, pharmacist, physician, physician's assistant, registered nurse, speech therapist, and school psychologist. As the average life expectancy continues to grow, our population of aging baby boomers will require more healthcare, and that translates into jobs and more jobs.

Aside from ever-growing opportunities in the healthcare field, though, here are four more hot career prospects that you may not have considered.

1. Sales. One growing area is in the technology sector, where new capabilities are outpacing customers' ability to understand them. Increasingly, high-tech firms are looking for tech-savvy, articulate salespeople who can explain their products' features to business customers and individual consumers. Another seemingly boundless area of growth is happening in online sales.

Consider these statistics on the sales job boom:

· About half of DePaul University's graduates with a major in business and a minor in sales have secured a sales job by commencement day; 90 percent are employed within three months.

· Last year, top sales performers saw a 3 percent increase in total compensation to $161,501, while mid-level performers did a bit better with a 5 percent increase in total compensation to $99,501. Low level performers, however, saw the biggest pay hike--up 10 percent to $70,994. (2007 ManageSmarter.com Compensation Survey)

· The Wall Street Journal reports that hiring competition is fierce in online ads sales, whose resurgence was a driver in alliances between eBay Inc. and Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. and Dell Inc. recently. That has left Microsoft Corp., Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Internet unit, Facebook Inc., News Corp., and others scrambling for top sales performers.

· U.S. online-ad revenue increased 30 percent last year to $12.5 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau trade group and consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers.

While you don't need a business background to be in sales, it doesn't hurt. Also, most schools now offer courses on sales and negotiation. The more coursework you have under your belt related to sales, the better off you'll be. Because demand is so high, though, many companies are willing to train salespeople on-the-job who have no prior experience.

2. Marcom (marketing communications). Marcom is a wide-open field that includes everything from advertising and marketing, to graphic design and technical writing, to project management and event planning. In essence, every large company needs people involved in marketing and communications, and jobs are varied and plentiful.

Getting starting in marcom usually requires a bachelor's degree. A communications major is good to have, but not essential. And advanced degrees are less valuable than hands-on experience. Opportunities abound and range from in-house marcom positions to jobs at event-management or marketing agencies. The best way to get into this field is to choose an aspect you love--say, food and hospitality--and then research jobs and companies in that field. You might find yourself working on PR for hotels, or you could get involved in catering for film companies or political campaigns. The best way to get started in marcom is to follow your passion, and see what enticing jobs are out there.

3. Open-Forum Entreprises. For you serious technology types with an entrepreneurial streak, exciting new ventures are springing up that empower users to develop interactive presentations--sharing audio, graphic, text, and video content--like a combination of YouTube, Yahoo, Google, Wikipedia, iTunes, and Microsoft working together, that consumers can adapt to their specific business or personal needs. Open-forum enterprises are clamoring for highly skilled content developers and programmers.

To find out more about opportunities in this brand-new technology field, you can seek out such companies as the Open Grid Forum (www.ogf.org) and the Open Group (www.og.org). Here you'll get an idea of the throbbing pulse of change--and how you might be part of it. Open forum and open grid technologies are making their way into large corporations, government, the entertainment field, and even classrooms. The field is wide open for self-motivated techies.

A deep knowledge of and love for computing is a must. A bachelor's degree isn't. To get into this field, you need to look no further than your computer. Organizations are literally begging for people to lead them through this new technology landscape, and high-paying jobs--many of which you can do from a home office--are ripe for the picking.

4. Corporate accounting. An area where much work has emerged, and highly compensated individuals are legion, is in various aspects of accounting, particularly in adherence to new Sarbanes Oxley regulations, which were put in place to keep corporations honest after the big accounting scandals at companies such as Enron.

Corporate accountants organize, record, analyze, and interpret the financial information of the companies for which they work. Depending on one's rank, responsibilities might include budgeting, performance evaluation, cost management, asset management, strategic planning, and the development of new products. Corporate accountants also prepare financial reports for such groups as stockholders, creditors, regulatory agencies, and tax authorities.

A knowledge of computers, a love for numbers, and an accounting degree are musts if you want to command a starting salary upwards of $55,000, which is an average starting salary. These jobs are in high demand; fortunately, there are plenty of them.

by Nicholas Aretakis