Last week I promised to give a sample questionnaire that you could use as a starting point for interviewing your high performers. Keep in mind that some of these questions may not apply to you because you may already have a system that gets at some of the underlying data these questions try to address. It's still a good idea to ask the questions because this kind of amiable chat can lead to insights that the data itself can't give you. So, even if you know the referral source for your HiPo, ask anyway, it will probably spark a discussion about the events around their recruiting experience that might give you a completely different set of questions to use.

1. Did we find you or did you find us?
2. If you found us, how did you find us? Was it a search on a job board like Monster or did you seek us out as a company? Did you know someone who worked here before you interviewed with us? Who was it? Was that person still working here when they referred you or were they a former employee?
3. During the recruiting process, was there anything that happened that gave you any reason to doubt working for us? If you were trying to recruit others like you, what advice could you give us?
4. What is one thing that we do as a company *for you* that you think supports your efforts at being successful the most?
5. What is one thing we did for you to support you as a high performer?
6. What is one thing that we don't do for you as a company that you feel you need to be more successful?
7. What is one thing that we do that keeps you from being more successful?
8. Beyond just attitude and work ethic, what do you think makes you more successful at this company than other people in similar positions?
9. Who would you consider to be other high performers in the company? What do you think is similar about you?
10. If you were to describe your value to the company to someone that was asking you if they should work here, what would you tell them?
11. Is there a type of person that you would try to discourage working here? Why?
12. How much training have you done since you started here? Do you prefer to self-pace or go through training in a classroom type environment?
13. How often are you given a performance review? Would you rather it were more frequent or less frequent? Would you rather have formal reviews or more ad hoc reviews? Who would you most like to get feedback from? Who would you least like to get feedback from?
14. Do you use our entire benefits package? Why or why not? What would you like to improve or remove when it comes to our benefits package?
15. What kinds of awards have you received? Would you rather have more awards or fewer? What kinds of awards do you really respect? Which are not that important to you?

There are obviously no right or wrong answers to these questions. What you are trying to do is ask questions in such a way that you can get some input that you can then compare. When you go to each HiPo and ask the questions (go to them personally, don't do it in an online survey), be sure to keep track of both what they say and how they say it for comparison. Keep adding questions and removing questions as you talk to HiPos and get a picture of them. Don't judge the responses. Ultimately, for the purposes of coming up with a model for identifying HiPos, the answers themselves aren't important, the answers' similarity to other HiPo answers is what you're after.