Well, your suggestions helps in most cases in general, not dealing only with Newbies.
1. Never go first when user don't have many positive feedbacks, use escrow in such cases. Even Sr. Or Hero members often don't have many feedbacks in their profile, so it's not safe to deal with them without escrow.
2. If newbie asking without collateral, it's 99.99% chance that you will be scammed. If higher ranked user is asking for loan without collateral, it's also very risky to lend him, unless he have very high trust score.
3. It's always recommend to use escrow, better safe than sorry. When dealing with Newbie it's must use thing, no questions needed.
4. Bounty managed by Newbie is big red flag, it's risky to join it. But even trusted manager isn't guarantee that you will get paid. Sometimes payments for bounty are issued by ICO team, not by manager, so risk to be scammed still remains.