Part 8: Asking About GRINDS

This is the latest in our series about how to unpack various types of stories in candidate interviews—see blog.talgo.io for other story archetypes!

For many human beings, effort itself is intrinsically rewarding. When you interview these people about their proud moments or accomplishments, they may tell stories that are more focused on the “blood, sweat and tears” than they are about the end result. This is especially common in certain industries where such sacrifice is highly rewarded (think: investment banking and tech startups).

These stories are common enough to be their own archetype, and we refer to them as Grinds. Interestingly, they are fairly simple to unpack. The hardest part is knowing that you are, in fact, talking about a Grind, that you are NOT simply discussing the “how” content in some other story archetype.

Here’s two examples that illustrate the difference:

(1) The candidate is proud of an early promotion at Amazon. You ask HOW they ended up being promoted early, and they tell you about the long hours they put in over a 6-month period, among other factors. This is NOT a Grind story. This is an Accolade story, in which the heavy effort was part of the HOW behind the promotion.

(2) The candidate is proud of their perseverance in developing a new technology at Amazon, staying on task despite extremely long hours and 6 months of technical setbacks. This wasn’t their most innovative or impactful innovation, but it was certainly the hardest won. This story is a Grind.

The key question to ask yourself: “Is the effort itself the story?” If so, you’re in a Grind story.

Here’s the interesting part. If it is truly a Grind story, you rarely want to spend more than a minute on it. You basically want to get (at most) two bits of info and then MOVE ON. What are those two bits of info? (1) Magnitude and (2) Meaning.

(1) MAGNITUDE

How crazy was crazy? How hard was hard? When the story is truly about the Grind itself, you can learn most of what you need to know by learning a few details about what the experience was really like. It’s essentially the What, How and Calibration all rolled into one. There are a few different types of follow-ups that can get you there, depending on the context:

• Sometimes the magnitude is best expressed by the moment of peak intensity: “Tell me about the craziest [day/week/moment] on that [project/deal/etc.]”
• Sometimes it’s valuable to put some quantitative boundaries on it: “How many investors had you met with before you got that term sheet?”
• Sometimes peer calibrations are the most insightful path: “How many of your peers were putting in that many hours per week?…Out of how many total peers?”

Once you feel like you can play a little video in your head of this person’s effort, and you know how uncommon it was, you may be ready to move on. But in some situations, you may want to pick up one more bit of information, particularly if the role they are interviewing for requires similarly intense effort (i.e., that old Grind might just happen again!) This brings us to…

(2) MEANING

What meaning did the candidate ascribe to this Grind story? Was it energizing or soul-crushing? Unfortunately, you can’t ask candidates this question directly in most situations. They will have an incentive to say they enjoyed their Grind or at least tolerated it, unless it was a truly egregious nightmare. A savvy candidate knows exactly how to reply to a question like, “How did you feel about having to work that hard?”

Instead, ask these candidates about the period AFTER the Grind, and what they actually DID as a result of it. Perhaps they re-negotiated the scope of their role or took a sabbatical because they were burned out? Perhaps they doubled-down or even moved to a more intense role? Here are a few simple ways to ask this question:

• “After that crazy experience, what was your next move?”
• “When that deal wrapped up, what did you do at that point?”
• “What decisions did you make as a result of that project?”

Calibration is important here, of course. It’s fine (in fact, probably a great thing) if a candidate changes their approach to improve their odds of success, or takes steps to create a more sustainable workload. We’re not looking for people who are gluttons for punishment. Just be careful if the Grind story was seriously destabilizing to the candidate AND it sounds similar to what they might actually experience in the new job.

In Conclusion

If the story is truly about the effort vs. the result, it’s a Grind story, and you don’t need to spend too much time on it. Figure out how hard of a slog it really was, and (perhaps) determine what the experience ended up meaning to the candidate by confirming their subsequent actions.