For too long, the prevailing paradigm for recruiting and retaining managers in for-profit and nonprofit corporations favored candidates that had resumes with the right bells and whistles.

Thus, to well-meaning recruiters who fully subscribe to that paradigm, the best predictors of top performance are big academic qualifications (from top universities) and of, course, big titled positions the candidates have held. In other words, qualification is king and experience is queen. And thanks to our digital dispensation, anybody who knows how to properly spice up their resume is able to scale the algorithm hurdle and land an interview. Fast.

While their “king” and “queen” can be helpful, I submit that they are not the best predictors. The best predictor is the deep-seated value system of the candidates.

As a matter of fact, I am not the first to reach that conclusion. According to a relevant Fast Company piece, many employers have realized that “What people know is less important than who they are. Hiring, they believe, is not about finding people with the right experience. It’s about finding people with the right mind-set.”

I agree completely.

To gauge the said right mindset, some conscientious recruiters depend on candidates’ responses on a value-centric questionnaire, etiquette at a downtown sit-down restaurant or feedback from references and previous employers. I particularly like the idea of recruiting from a pool of frequent volunteers within or without. Why? I believe it takes a lot of moral courage to continue to render good service to others without compulsion and compensation.

As many chief executives do, I often spend some time weighing the performance (or non performance) of my top executives against their pre-recruitment qualifications, experience, posture and promises.
In almost all cases, the top performers are the women and men with the right mindset and attitude toward our 107-year-old mission and the ever-increasing population – of homeless, hungry and hurting people – we serve.

Those top performers are usually selfless self-starters. They need minimal supervision. They don’t just pretend to do the job when they think I am “looking” and then gallivant when I am away meeting with potential and existing donors and partners.

Instead, they demonstrate their deep sense of commitment and dedication to the job they are paid to do. And without singing their own praise at every turn, they let their accountability-in-action speak for them; accountability not only to their supervisor but also to their good conscience and most importantly the Almighty God, who, unlike mortal me, is everywhere at the same time, and sees what they do when nobody is watching.

Top performance anywhere is mostly a function of good character, and, in the timeless words of Dwight L. Moody, “character is what you are in the dark.” An insincere and corner-cutting person with top degrees and long-winded work experience will likely underperform “in the dark” where there might be no immediate glory or gain. That’s not right.

So, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” So says Paul in Colossians 3: 23.

As for me, I say to you, my friends, get all the big qualifications and big experiences you can but NEVER FORGET to develop your character because it is your biggest and best asset.

A cursory look at the overtime pay rule announced by the Obama administration on May 18 could present it as a very good thing, more so when it is projected to benefit over 4 million U.S. workers in its first year starting December 1.

Simply put, the rule requires employers to pay overtime to workers with annual earnings under $47,476 for working more than 40 hours a week.

To Vice President Joe Biden, the implication is that “the worker wins.” But is it that simple at many nonprofits?

Paying the mandatory overtime could easily drive overheads through the roof, and consequently reduce charitable contributions from individuals and families who like supporting nonprofits with low overheads. In my nearly 19 years of serving metro Detroit through Detroit Rescue Mission, I have never met individual donors who adjudged high overheads as needful and helpful to nonprofits.

They want us to plough the bulk of their donations into cost-effective programming that results in rehabilitating human trafficking victims, substance abusers and homeless women, children and veterans, among others. And most of these individual donors are not rich. In fact, many are seniors living on meager income but routinely responding to the call of their conscience to be their neighbors’ keepers.

As government grants and institutional donor sources become harder to get due mainly to new regulations and “fatigue”, many nonprofits are increasingly depending on the generosity of individuals and families – even as the number of those needing their life-saving services go on the rise.

Because all nonprofits are not created equal, they will not adapt to the new overtime rule the same way. For instance, universities and community colleges may readily pass on the increased overhead costs to students, and hospitals can do the same to their patients, which is unfortunate.

The case is different with human service organizations serving vulnerable, underserved and financially distressed individuals and groups. So, they would resort to eliminating some vital programs and retrenching the employees who run them or turning many full time employees into part-time, just to reduce overheads.

They would also find it expedient to freeze promotion of employees in certain pay brackets, thus limiting upward mobility opportunities for those workers.

Imagine what the morale will be when many employees feel demoted or stagnated. Poor morale is tantamount to poor productivity, which, of course, hurts not only the nonprofits but also the communities they serve.

I completely agree with the good book that workers are worthy of their fair wages. Yet, the same book also tells us that such wages should be as negotiated between the employer and the employee (see Matthew 20).

Thus, a nonprofit that is able to pay overtime to employees who work over 40 hours a week should not hesitate to do so because the happier the employees, the better the performance of the organization.

As for those who are unable to pay it – and find the necessary timecard systems costly and cumbersome – the new rule could undermine their operations and create distrust between employees and their employers.

And what happens when the millennials who use small and medium-sized nonprofits to gain much-needed job experience find that such opportunities are drying up?

What happens when the many retirees who choose to work at nonprofits as their way of giving back to the community are made to think more about pay than community service? Or when the dwindled operational costs of these nonprofits force them to reduce or stop patronage of employment generating small businesses that provide them important services?

Like any good employer with conscience, I want the best for all my employees. Sometimes, I wish I could pay them the varying amounts they want. But if a new regulation directly or indirectly threatens the continued existence of our reputable organization and the quality of our programming, we all could become unemployed soon. Then, everyone loses.

Spring is commencement season; so everywhere you look nowadays, there is a graduation ceremony happening or about to happen. And that’s really nice.

Completing a valuable and well packaged training program is a thing of joy not only for the graduates but also their friends and family who usually shower them with commendations and gifts.

But for many graduates, the joy quickly turns into sorrow as the harsh reality of the labor market sets in. Good paying jobs are hard to come by, and despite the appreciable inroads of crowd-funding sources like Kickstarter, GoFundMe and Indiegogo, funds for entrepreneurial ventures are not easy to get.

So, before they know it, hope begins to fade. Self-improvement efforts seem wasteful. Many who were hitherto perceived as friends keep a disturbing distance. It’s miserable. It’s horrible!

That’s why our programs at 107-year-old faith-based nonprofit Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries (https://drmm.org) emphasize self-leadership. We operate such programs with the notion that no matter how God-fearing and networking savvy our participants are (and these are very necessary), they still need self-understanding, self-determination, self-control and self-direction to succeed in life. And a job search –whether online or offline – requires nothing less. The same is true of generating self-employment.

We had to do this year’s commencement early on April 22 – graduating over 200 men and women who have successfully completed their life-bettering programs at our various facilities in metro Detroit – because we wanted our graduates to kick their self-leadership gear into overdrive.

Before receiving their diplomas, they watched a stirring performance by the DRMM Choir, and listened to inspiring speeches from a host of heavyhitters, including R$B superstar Kem (who graduated over 20 years ago from one of our programs), Detroit Free Press columnist Mitch Albom, Detroit News columnist Bankole Thompson, and TV personality and former pro basketball star Kurt David. They needed such. Inspiration engenders self-leadership and self-leadership has to withstand the periodic test of courage and determination.

Perhaps, the point of maximum interest was when I had the singular honor of donating cars to two graduates to help make life easier for them as they grapple with the challenges of life after rehabilitative training.

Unfortunately, I can’t donate refurbished cars to every job-seeking or newly employed person in metro Detroit, but I can, through this and other platforms at my disposal, encourage them to not give up when the going gets tough but rather muster the courage to defy stagnation, mediocrity and failure.

To borrow the words of Israelmore Ayivor, “A mere motivator sees potentials in people and tells them to take actions. A true leader sees the same potentials in the same people and influences them to optimize them under his God-lead inspirations.”

They lead well who first lead themselves, and many great minds gained very useful self-leadership lessons during the transitory period of lack, abandonment and misery. Looking inward they found hope. And looking upward, they found help.

May the Class of 2016 find the hope and help that never fail. May their self-leadership bring them good dividends.