You can't blame dotcoms for trying. In these difficult days, virtually all Internet companies -- if they haven't actually skulked into bankruptcy court -- are proudly proclaiming themselves on “paths to profitability.”

Unless you have a very high tolerance for risk, you'll want to evaluate the financial condition of prospective employers before you sign on. And when you're considering putting years of your career into a startup, you can't just take the company's press releases as gospel. You need to act like an industry analyst and dig deeper, using resources the Web brings to your fingertips.

The Qualifying Round

How do you vet a potential dotcom employer? First, find out whether the firm is publicly traded. If the company is private, available financial data will be thin at best.

Another thing to keep in mind is the process of going public “puts a lot of stress on the company,” says Michael Donnelly, a corporate recruiter with SmartForce PLC of Redwood City, California, a publicly traded firm that provides online courses to business people.

Donnelly says the public or private status of his company is the top question on the minds of many who apply to SmartForce, which we'll use as a case study. Randy Coin, a content developer who joined SmartForce in September 2000, didn't rely solely on what her prospective employer told her. “I got the public information that's available on the company,” she says. “I realized the company was at least stable,” since it produced profits in previous years.

Next, because first-mover advantage is especially important in the Internet industry, you should consider eliminating any employer that isn't first and best in its space. You can make your own quick assessment of the employer's field of competitors by consulting a resource such as the free company descriptions available on business information providers like Hoovers Online, Vault.com or the Securities & Exchange Commission's EDGAR Database.

The Nitty-Gritty

The key indicator of the future health of any company is revenue growth, according to Mike Brennan, a senior analyst with International Data Corp. in Framingham, Massachusetts. “SmartForce's prospects are outstanding,” he says. “They're one of the biggest players. People are adopting e-learning through organizations.”

Brennan says it's also important to look at a potential employer's budgeting priorities. Small- to medium-sized firms that are making a lot of acquisitions may not be doing the best thing for their core business. Look for big investments in marketing and research and development.

Consider the Source

Where can you go to delve into the financial condition of companies on your short list? Lots of places. For basic information public companies are required to report, the firm's own Web site is a good place to start. On SmartForce's site, for example, you'll find a number of press releases.

But beware. All companies take pains to cast news in the best possible light. Take, for example, SmartForce's Q1, 2001 earnings report. SmartForce reported achieving "profitability ahead of expectations" on its Web site. Reuters, meanwhile, wrote: "SmartForce Reports Loss, Raises Q1, 2001 Profit Targets." There's nothing nefarious going on here. It's just standard operating procedure for journalists and corporate spinmeisters to tell different stories, even when they base their interpretations on the same numbers. SmartForce highlighted the earnings figure that "excludes amortization of intangible assets," while Reuters included those expenses, yielding a small loss rather than a tiny profit.

See an Analyst

How can mere mortals glean useful information from technical analysis? By reading the analysts' own digests of the numbers, written in prose intended for the rest of us. Check out CNBC's Research Wizard section, or if you have an online brokerage account, take advantage of your access to in-depth research reports. For financial junkies, the EDGAR database lets you delve even deeper.

So if SmartForce offers you a job, should you take it? It's probably a better bet than most Internet companies. But wherever your dotcom search leads, your research will make that first day on the job less jittery.