I had to sit down and change all of my references after a delicate sensitive situation got out of hand and it took me about an hour to look for different people.

Best wishes.

I have four....but I rarely use more than two....

however they are friends not former co workers....

In UK you are only allowed to use two references.

In the U.S., standard job applications have lines for three to four employment reference people. It's always good to have that number of people available, plus a spare or two, just in case someone becomes no longer available to use as a reference.

If someone is in the position of having no references, it doesn't make that person bad. Sometimes the people surrounding us in life aren't much good for anything at all. That's when we sometimes have to do whatever it takes to make it in life. I think that years ago I may have even made up references that didn't even exist in order to get jobs, but then, the requirements for these jobs weren't high, and they probably never checked my references anyway. So I got the jobs. Mostly things like moving furniture or factory work, jobs with no great future in them. For a real job that pays real money and that has a future in it with possibilities of pay increases and promotions, it is necessary to have good references that do check out.

Last week I googled my employment references people. I found out that one of them had a very bad criminal history. So, I asked another person this week if he would be an employment reference for me, and he said yes. The moral of the story is, always check your own employment references before giving them as references to employers, and you'll save yourself a lot of potential grief.

I generally use former co workers, supervisors, and even customers for references. When I say former co workers they did not have to work in the same department that I worked. They just work for the same company and have had some observations and interactions with me on the job. They need to be able to say something about me.

If you ever work a temporary job it is good to get the contact information of someone in the company to use as a reference. Any kind of work that you do such as volunteer work, self employment allows you to come in contact with someone that can vouch for your work habit and character.

Good advice about using your contact with the temp service. I hadn't thought of that.

It's especially hard when the references have to be past employee's you had worked with. Most of the time I have no contact with people I worked with outside of work.

It's not that they were bad, I just had no connection to any of them. Where I live, people live so far from each other, and the hours we work are not conducive to getting together much, if we wanted to.

And using friends, I don't see how that is not considered biased. Of course a friend won't say bad things about you.