If a reference said “I would not hire them again,” am I just locked out of working at a company forever?

So last year I had gotten through two rounds of interviews and a take-home assignment with one of the largest employers in my area - a post-secondary institution. I got a verbal offer and a start date, conditional on a reference check. 24 hours after speaking to one of my references, just four days before I was supposed to start, my offer was rescinded. I assumed that it must have just been horrible luck and the school losing the budget for the position, but as many of you guessed when I first posted here about it, I eventually discovered that one of my references was being two-faced and sabotaging me. Essentially, I was doing five peoples’ jobs for them (web design, graphic design, email marketing, web development, website moderation), they fired me when deadlines started to suffer when my dog died, and then they tried to replace me with an overseas web developer. I guess they didn’t realize that still left four more people worth of jobs not being done, and so she had to pick up all that slack. I guess that made her resentful, but she didn’t show it outwardly, and I ended up staying on the Board of Directors at this non-profit for two more years - just no longer doing any active website work. I thought we had a good relationship. Anyway, when I learned she was sabotaging me, I tried to reach out to the school’s HR to request what exactly was said through FIPPA, but they said that they don’t need to voluntarily comply because those notes were labour-related documents. So then I said “okay, understood, but reall…

Posted by /u/lucasg115 on r/recruitinghell
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