Issue date: September 3, 2000

Violinist Joshua Bell shares his links
Last week's Best of the Web

Inside info for job seekers

Looking for work? Logging on is the smartest way for mid-career job changers and newly laid-off dot-commers alike to go from pink slip to white collar. Once you've clicked on a few job listings at sites like Monster.com, it's a good idea to do some investigating. Vault.com and WetFeet.com are two career research sites that go a step further than the online job banks, by providing insider profiles of companies in almost every major industry, including high tech, banking and real estate.

It's all part of a trend to arm job-seekers with important data on employers. For instance, it's now possible to find out specific interview questions likely to be asked by a potential employer (say, Andersen Consulting), or what kind of salary you can expect at Merrill Lynch.

These sites can be like peeking into gripe sessions at the office water cooler. Read Vault's profile of an online superstore and you'll learn that employees "don't flinch at a 60-hour work week." At the site's message board, however, more than a few people who claim to be employees there describe it as a "sweatshop."

For more dirt, check sites like JobReviews.com, a massive message board where users post their salaries to compare with workers at similar companies. Included are a database specialist in Atlanta making $42,000 a year and a night cleaner at McDonald's flipping $880 a month.

More resources:

careerjournal.com For features on the job market and a special section for executives, check in at The Wall Street Journal's succinct and savvy career page.
Monster.com This massive site (with more than 400,000 U.S. jobs) is also a community for advice and commiseration.
CoolWorks.com Hate your cubicle? Cool Works has listings of jobs at ski resorts, ranches, theme parks.
ProvenResumes.com Take a quiz to rate your résumé, and spice it up with help from pros.

By Rula Razek, editor in chief of Internet Cool Guide (internetcoolguide.com).

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My Web: Joshua Bell

Movers, shakers and their bookmarks

Joshua Bell, 32, has been performing professionally for more than half his life. But this classical violinist -- whose new album, Sibelius/Goldmark Violin Concertos, is his 23rd -- isn't out of touch. Whether traveling to a far-off spot like Amsterdam for one of more than 100 concerts a year or just chillin' at home in NYC,

Bell (joshuabell.com) stays hooked up to the Web: "I use etrade.com to trade stocks. I spend a lot of time researching stocks and following my own portfolio. The fact that I can dial in and trade on the New York Stock Exchange at any time is amazing. I tend to go for higher-risk things. But I'm not putting my whole welfare on it." And Bell loves the Internet Movie Database, imdb.com. "I use it constantly. My laptop communicates with my cable modem wirelessly, and I can wander around the house and be connected to the Internet. So I can watch TV and wonder 'What was that actor in?' and look it up." -- Michele Hatty