<prompt> Human: I am a junior engineer that graduated from university two years ago, and have since been working in a small engineering company that pays an average amount for my position and experience.I was contacted a few weeks ago by email regarding a job opening at a Canadian branch of a large oil company. Today I was surprised to find in the mail an offer of employment for a full time position. The offer is very tempting, but I feel like there are a lot of red flags.1. Accompanying this letter is a cheque for a rather large five figures amount of money, described to be my first month salary and new employee support fund. This cheque is postmarked to late next month. The base salary quoted in the letter is in the range of a low six figure amount.2. I had not gone through a formal interview process. I was only asked to send in my CV, and to fill an interview formquestionnaire in which I was asked a few basic general questions What do you know about our company, What are your strengths, etc.. There was little to no communication between me and the company otherwise.3. I dont know much about the job Im offered - the job description was relatively vague, merely describing a wide spectrum of general engineering duties.4. The offer of employment mandated that I will have to attend a three-week training program next month. The location of the program is on the other side of the country, and the included cheque is postmarked to after this program, so if something goes wrong I will be out of a few thousand dollars as I have to pay for air travel.5. Lastly, and most importantly, I will have to quit my current job almost immediately if I decide to take on this offer, as the training program will begin in about two weeks.I was instructed by the letter to call a contact from the company, but before doing so I want to seek some advice. This truly seems like a too good to be true scenario, and I am very wary that I may be the target of some elaborate scam. Has anyone ever had a similar experience? What kind of questions should I ask the contact to determine his legitimacy? Keep in mind that I dont want to prematurely dismiss this job offer, just in case it does happen to be legitimate.  <response>: Aside from the fact that this is almost certainly a scam, I would never accept an offer for a job without doing an interview there. Interviewing is a two way street. Interviews are not just a screening tool for employers to judge if you are qualified, they are an opporunity for you to ask questions about the the responsibilities of the job and to determine if the job is right for you. A couple paragraph description from an ad is not enough to understand what you are getting yourself into. 