>>718480903
but I already am, on top of my current paid job...
well, once a month but that's way better than nothing
>>718480970
>there's a good number of bosses that abuse this system and demand immense overtime or else they will give fake bad references right?
depends on the country you live in, talking exclusively about your boss from a community job. Your boss from a community place won't be stupid enough to demand overtime for references, they need to uphold a good impression. Most community stuff and NGOs are strictly watched by the government to ensure they aren't wasting out taxes. So they gotta behave way better than your average fast food boss.
>most recent reference isn't necessarily the best
agreed, and that sucks
but the good thing about community work is you can just quit if your boss is an ass or the place sucks and go somewhere else. Community service places are always starved for staff, you can switch places there or even come once a week to work 4hrs and secure a nice boss reference easily unless you're an ass that's a pain to deal with. The main reason is corpos love references from middle to upper management, everyone else is usually irrelevant.
>>718481690
>Most work I've done in my life was unpaid. It led nowhere.
nigga, that's on you
unless you're on a shithole where every job sucks or your field of expertise is garbage you better start handing out resumes to other companies. When your current place is filled with assholes you gotta abandon ship assap. Otherwise they will keep abusing you and then dispose of you when you're too mentally drained to do shit well.
The community service thing is to secure GOOD job references. Even if you do comm service once a week/month for 4hrs, better do it to get a nice job reference there than from your current job where your boss is an ass that will make sure you never land a job.