Joining an Indy Corp

Finally!  It took a few days to scout down some good corps, and even longer to go through their application processes (only to be rejected once and ignored twice), but I believe I've found a good corp for my indy corp research.

For obvious security reasons, I will not disclose the name of the corp or any of its members, nor will I publish the names of any systems we operate in..  However, I will base future posts off experiences within this corp using aliases and generalizing situations.

My goal here is to give my readers an idea of what they can expect from being in a corp without compromising my new corp's safety.

Alright, my disclaimer is out of the way.  Now I want to give you an idea of what all I went through trying to join a corp, and explain a few new recruiting techniques that I learned along the way.

When I first started searching for a corp, I had a few simple goals in mind.

1. The corp had to be indy based.
2. It had to have been around for more than a few months.
3. It had to have a professional recruitment pitch and not openly advertise pirating or griefing.

I started my search in a place I never bother much with: the corp recruitment ad board.  There were two corps here that I picked-out.  One was quite old, a couple years, and another a little newer but still professional.

I sent an app to both without speaking to a recruiter.  The new corp ignore me, and although the old corp sent me a message saying they would convo me about accepting the app, they wound up rejecting it.  Didn't even say why, prob didn't care either. 

Don't take things like that personally, though.  Big corps can sometimes get lots of apps from randies, and the threat of espionage in EVE is very real, so being accepted to a good corp can be an honor.

After that, I threw out a few lines in the mining channel (which happens to be one of the most active chat channels in EVE (mining is boring)).  I asked if any indy corps were recruiting, and actually managed to get a response.

I was invited to a private chat that then lead to a group interview.  To my disappointment, the corp recruiting me was not much of an indy corp, however they did refer me to a good prospect.

I applied to corp #3 with high hopes.  Their info seemed positive and concise, their website was professional, and their application procedures were easy-to-follow for me yet very secure for them.

There was one catch with them, though.  They had recently been wardec'd.

It's really not a good idea to recruit during a wardec for security reasons, and they were right not to be accepting apps.  I applied anyway just in case, but before I could get an answer, I tried one last method of joining a corp.  It also happens to be the most obvious first choice, but one I wanted to avoid to test other methods first.

I joined the recruitment chat channel and asked if any indy corps were recruiting.

If you recall, I advised against this if you were recruiting because any amount of corp advertisement can get you targeted by other corps.  However, there was a very simple and obvious method of recruiting here that I feel quite silly for not considering.  It involves, patience, though:

You wait for someone actively looking for a corp to speak-up, then private chat them.

Duh, lol.

This was how I was recruited to my new corp.  I was also told to mention who recruited me for referral.  Using this method, a corp can recruit without fear of advertising themselves in a place where people are looking to join.  I guess I had not considered this method because when I saw the copy/pasta ads so many corps use in the recruitment channel, I just though 'this is how it is,' and never gave it a second thought.

At any rate, you can add this to your list of recruitment tactics.

Upon joining my new corp, I was given a few simple, but important instructions.  First, I was told to pick a base to operate from depending on my interests.  Next, I had to sign-up for the corp mailing list, join a separate chat channel than corp chat (still don't get the reasoning here since the channel was advertised in corp chat), and I was also given an assignment for 'graduating.'

Apparently, the referral was necessary to complete a graduation req in the corp.  One of the grad reqs is to recruit two new members - a clever recruitment strategy as well.  Also, I get 20 mill for recruiting :)

I'll post more about my adventures in my new corp this weekend.  I'm excited to get started :)