I recently left my job a couple of months ago, and I had two coworkers agree to be my references. However, when I started getting job offers, one of them completely ignored my requests, while the other was very reluctant to even give me his email address. It took him 7 hours to respond, which felt very telling about his enthusiasm for my success. This experience made me realize that if someone isn't excited to support me when I have a potential job offer, I can't trust them as a reference. So, I ended up reaching out to old coworkers from jobs I had up to 7 years ago, and they were more than happy to help me out. I’ve learned to be very selective about who I choose to use as references.