How to Spot a Bad Job

As someone who is very recently familiar with working at a terrible place for a terrible person, I have been much more diligent about trying to spot 'TERRIBLE JOBS' by closely reading job descriptions. I recently saw this posting in one of the groups I am a member of on LinkedIn:

SIGNON BONUSES OFFERED!!! $7,000EMPLOYEEREFERRALBONUS!!! FREE 42 INCH HDTV FOR THE FIRST FIVE QUALIFIEDHIRES!!!

Now, the first clue is the endless litany of capital letters. Another hint would be the lack of spaces. We could perhaps attempt to attribute that to the formatting of LinkedIn postings, but it certainly speaks to a lack of detail orientation. Finally, we look past appearances to the meat of the content.

1) Signon bonuses offered

2) $7,000 employee referral bonus

3) Free TV for the first five hires???

This screams a few things to me. One, someone promised the government that some work could get done before having any sort of cohesive plan to staff this project. Two, in this economy if you have to pay a signing bonus and you aren't Google or Apple or Amazon, then your job must really be unattractive. Three, wow, a new TV? Really? Does this company just have some TVs laying around that they want to give away? If so why? Does this not reek of used car salesmanship?

Anyone who responded to this job ad must really not care where they work. If this project is so haphazardly put together that they are throwing money and TVs at the first five people to show up to work, how crazy do you think it will be when you get there! Too crazy, I should think, to have much time left in the evenings to watch your fave program on that big screen tv. Good luck filling those positions.