How to avoid work at home scams

Staffcentrix, an East Coast training firm that specializes in telework and home-based careers, caught my attention today with a press release featuring this cautionary headline:

"Work at Home Scam Ratio Rises 12% as Jobseekers Scramble for Home-Based Jobs"

If anyone knows this, it's the good folks at Staffcentrix, who run a fantastic website called Rat Race Rebellion, for which they screen and post many legitimate work at home jobs each week. Sadly, out of the nearly 5,000 work at home job leads Staffcentrix's researchers review each week, only 1 in 55 are legit. (A year ago, that figure was 1 in 48; two years ago it was in in 42.)

So how do you tell if a work at home job is worthless? Staffcentrix CEO Christine Durst offers this list of red flags:

1. The words "work at home" appear in the heading of the ad. As Durst says, "'Work from home' is not a job title.

2. The ad says that no experience is required for the job and you don' t need to send a resume.

3. You have to fork over your credit card number in order to get more details about the job.

4. The pay is outrageous. (Trust me, if there was a job that didn't require any previous experience that paid $20,000 a month, everyone would be doing it.)

5. You receive the ad in your email inbox.

6. The job description is vague at best. Often there won't even be a job description.

7. The language in the ad sounds urgent, employing phrases such as "Limited number of openings!" or "Seeking 11 people. Act now!"

8. The ad includes images of sports cars, yachts, mansions, tropical beaches, and scantily clad women. 

You know how in the 9-to-5 world it's not easy to get a great job because the competition's usually pretty stiff? It's the same way in the work at home job world. So if an employer's begging you to work for them without even seeing your resume, it's either an incredibly crummy job or an out-and-out scam.

Freelance writer Michelle Goodman is the author of "My So-Called Freelance Life" and "The Anti 9-to-5 Guide." E-mail her at ninetothrive@nwjobs.com.