Problems booting up OS after erasing data

The agency I work for may sell some of our older MACs. I was getting a MacBook Air ready to sell and chose the option to erase data in the recovery menu. Now OS will not boot up and none of the commands for safe mode, recovery or other will boot computer up. The error -1008F comes up. If this is indicating activation lock, it was used with an icloud account for a user that no longer works with my agency by an IT staff member who also no longer works for our agency. I contacted both of these but they do not know the password. I replaced the IT staff member. Is there a way to get past the -1008F activation lock issue? The OS will not book even with option, command R