Of course you can be 'unrecommended' too. A few years ago I attended an RAF reunion. A few of us started talking about easyJet's recruitment practices. Putting two and two together we concluded that a former colleague
who was not present but flew for easyJet had been spiking our applications. Apparently he was neutralising potential political threats.
Difficult to prove of course but someone who was thoroughly sly and duplicitous twenty years ago probably hadn't changed his spots.