Apply for jobs you want until you get an offer. Companies now aren’t wasting time offering jobs prior to checking references (not sure if this is applicable to small businesses). Even then, the tech company I work for has policies that when checking references, they don’t record opinions of previous employers due to the chance that they may say negative things to keep an employee. Instead, they’re checking the accuracy of time of employment and title
IT jobs are widely available in today’s job market.
Apply for jobs you want until you get an offer. Companies now aren’t wasting time offering jobs prior to checking references (not sure if this is applicable to small businesses). Even then, the tech company I work for has policies that when checking references, they don’t record opinions of previous employers due to the chance that they may say negative things to keep an employee. Instead, they’re checking the accuracy of time of employment and title