The hiring manager slides two questions across the table:
"Tell me about a time you exceeded your sales target."
"Tell me about a time you helped someone succeed."
Same candidate. Same room. Same stakes.
But these questions aren't measuring the same thing at all.
The first question is seductive. It's clean, measurable, binary. The candidate either crushed their numbers or they didn't. The story unfolds predictably: obstacle, hustle, triumph. 110% of quota. President's Club. The champagne moment.
We love these stories because they feel safe. Numbers don't lie, right?
But here's what that question really reveals: Someone who can run fast when the starting gun fires. Someone who can sprint when the finish line is visible. Someone who optimizes for the quarter, the promotion, the bonus check.
Hunger is rocket fuel for the short game.
The second question makes the room shift. Suddenly, the candidate can't rely on a spreadsheet. They have to dig deeper, into the messy, immeasurable territory of human connection.
Maybe they tell you about mentoring the new hire who was struggling with rejection. Or staying late to help a colleague prepare for their first client presentation. Or the time they gave up their own lead to someone whose pipeline was running thin.
These stories don't have neat metrics. You can't put "helped Sarah gain confidence" on a dashboard. But something profound happens when someone shares these moments—you see their character, not just their performance.
Most companies are stuck in sprint thinking. They hire for immediate impact, for the quick win, for the next quarter's results. They optimize for hunger because hungry people deliver fast.
And hungry people do deliver. They'll work weekends. They'll make the calls. They'll hit the number.
For about eighteen months.
Then something interesting happens. The purely hungry ones plateau. They burn out. They job-hop for a better deal. They optimize their own quarter-to-quarter performance just like they did for your company.
Meanwhile, the heart-driven candidates are playing a different game entirely.
Companies that hire for heart aren't anti-performance. They're pro-sustainable performance. They understand that the person who helps others succeed creates something more valuable than any individual quota attainment: they build culture.
Culture compounds. A heart-driven salesperson doesn't just close deals—they elevate the entire team. They share tactics. They celebrate others' wins. They create psychological safety that lets everyone take bigger risks.
When someone leaves a heart-driven team, the knowledge stays. The relationships endure. The culture persists.
When someone leaves a hunger-only team, they take everything with them.
While everyone else is asking about targets exceeded and deals closed, the marathon companies are asking different questions:
"Tell me about a time you made someone else look good."
"Describe a moment when you chose long-term relationship over short-term gain."
"What's something you taught someone that they still use today?"
These questions surface the invisible skills that matter most in the long game: empathy, systems thinking, delayed gratification, and genuine care for outcomes beyond your own.
Here's the nuance that matters: You need both.
Pure heart without hunger is noble but ineffective. Pure hunger without heart is effective but unsustainable.
The magic happens when you find people whose hunger serves their heart. People who exceed targets because they genuinely care about solving customer problems. People who compete fiercely because they want their team to win, not just themselves.
These are your marathon runners. They'll still sprint when you need them to, but they're building something that lasts.
If you only ask hunger questions, you'll only get hunger people. And hunger people will give you exactly what you measure—nothing more, nothing less.
But if you're building for decades, not quarters, you need to start asking heart questions. You need to surface the stories that reveal character, not just capability.
The companies that figure this out first will have an unfair advantage. While their competitors cycle through talented-but-transient sprinters, they'll be building teams of people who genuinely care about each other's success.
That's not just a nicer way to work.
It's a better way to win.
Every hire is a choice between the quarter and the decade.
Between the sprint and the marathon.
Between hunger and heart.
The best companies have learned that this isn't actually a choice at all—it's a sequence. First, you hire for heart. Then, you teach them to run fast.
Because someone who cares about others' success will always be willing to learn how to create more of it.
The reverse isn't always true.
The question isn't whether your next hire can help you win the quarter. The question is whether they'll help you build something worth winning for the next ten years.