Alliance & Corporation Recruitment Center

Of Sound Mind is a strongly cohesive, newbie-focused, and professional PVP alliance currently located in the Catch region of sovereign 0.0. We are one of the core alliances forming the HERO coalition, but previously lived in NPC nullsec (Syndicate, Curse).

Our white paper and our history post have more historical information, but it'd be a waste of words to paraphrase perfectly good writing.

Our alliance currently consists of the following three corporations (plus associated alt corps):

• Reasonable People
Recruits newbies with less than 15 million SP, and trains them to be lean, mean killing machines. 150 characters, 75 real-life players. Equally strong in EUTZ and USTZ.

• Valkyries of Night
A corp of real life friends, recruitment closed to the public. 100 characters, 50 real-life players. Strongest in late USTZ, with some EUTZ and early USTZ presence.

• Noir. Academy
Training corporation of Noir., a mercenary outfit that we have close ties to from past contracts/campaigns. Students graduate to Noir. in 2-3 months rather than permanently remaining with us. 30 characters, 20 real-life players including students and Noir. mentor alts. Activity depends upon timezones of current students.

We number about 150 people in total, with fleets consisting of between 10 and 30 individuals depending upon the time of day and spectrum from spur-of-the-moment roam to serious business preannounced timer fight. We operate the standard set of services you'd expect from a nullsec PVP alliance - subsidized jump freight, voice comms, forums, and out of game text communications, along with some extras you might not find elsewhere, such as automatic reimbursement of every single ship lost in fleet PVP at hull value with no paperwork required, well-stocked market, transparent finances with no malarky membership fees, and a professional atmosphere with zero tolerance for bigotry (we do swear like fuckin' sailors -- huge difference between curse words and slurs).

We're doing more than fine at holding our own as is, but also would benefit by having a few more allies that share our values flying under our banner. We think it's a problem that sov 0.0 historically has consisted of the same corps recycling through with very little fresh blood, and we happen to hold multiple systems we're barely using. Therefore, we're opening up an invitation for like-minded corporations to contact us if they feel that we are a mutual fit.

Our requirements:

• Outstandingly classy and professional.
http://tinyurl.com/stopusingslurs pretty much summarizes our position. If you would even hesitate to kick a member who calls others 'fags',' jews', or 'niggers', you need not apply. If you view a strongly policed culture as a chore rather than as a benefit, we're not a fit. We distinguish ourselves from other alliances by being a mature, professional community, not a frathouse or xbox live server.

• Smart and not Luddites.
There's a reason this, and all of our other material, is a wall of words. You have to be literate and smart -- dealing with idiots is not fun. We expect to see leadership and members on services. If you aren't on IRC, you are dead to us. Bonus points if some of your members do EVE tool development or are otherwise technical.

• Reasonably sized and active.
Between 20 and 150 characters, at least 10 real-life people behind keys. We aren't interested in people with grand dreams and nothing concrete to show, nor are we interested in megacorps that would form their own separate clique rather than integrating as part of the alliance as a whole. Regardless of how members come into the alliance, we operate as a single team. Corps are administrative, not cultural, divisions. We expect to know your members by name and voice. It's a dealbreaker if you're mostly inactive or alts.

• Willing to move 100% to nullsec and behave safely.
Our alliance thrives because we have a single culture and live in exactly one place. The opportunity we are offering is for you to join us in nullsec, rather than keeping feet in two boats. We have safety rules to limit our attractiveness as targets -- no shiny ships, all members that are undocked in standing fleet and voice comms at all times. As a corollary, this also means that we should not ever see your members derping around highsec where they might get awoxed or wardecced. Our alliance is banned from incursion communities -- we gank them from time to time. Live in null, make money in null, fight in null.

• Willing to learn to PVP.
We don't require that you have the greatest killboard ever, but we expect to not see a history of shiny losses to wardecs/suicide ganks. We're willing to teach from the fundamentals on up, and we have years of experience teaching generations of newbies, but your desire has to be there to be the hunter, not the cowering prey. Being in nullsec means having to take up arms to defend oneself, rather than rolling over at the first sign of trouble.

• Long-term leadership potential.
Alliance hoppers and fair-weather-friend bittervets need not apply. Have a few people willing to step up and lead. We expect to be able to entrust you with responsibilities over time as you become a fourth pillar corp of the alliance.

• Patient with newbies.
Newbies are our past, present, and future. Help newbies with every 'stupid' question and include them in what you do. Every rifter counts.

We are aware that the list makes us very picky, but we aren't in a rush and very well might wind up continuing as-is -- but we do want to see who's out there in case there is a match. If you are interested in getting to know us better, join the #corprecruitment channel on irc.of-sound-mind.com on port 6697 (use SSL).

You're a movie, Tinker Train.

Why we're thinking of recruiting a third 'pillar' corp, reason #231: EVE is getting bigger by the day. What passed for small to medium sized gang content three years ago is more like tiny to small sized gang content now. We like small to medium sized gang content. A third 'pillar' corp will help us bridge the 30 man gang gap that starts to unlock new types of content.

Why we're thinking of recruiting a third 'pillar' corp, reason #55: Just got too much in the way of resources. We're in HERO Coalition and are good friends with Brave Newbies. They've been extremely generous in terms of saying "Hey, you guys, friends! You can have this, and that!" We don't take as much advantage of "this and that" as we should. With the amount of resources we control, we could easily double in size without issue.

Why we're thinking of recruiting a third 'pillar' corp, reason #83: RITES, the corp I run in the alliance, recruits people who are sub-15 million SP. V.N., the other large corp in the alliance, only recruits people who work at the company they're all affiliated with or real life friends of those people. There is no corp that recruits classy as **** pilots with more than 15 million SP. So there's a niche available for a corp to fill, where your recruiting doesn't get cannibalized by other corps in your alliance. I generally get a decent amount of greater than 15 million SP people contacting who want to join my corp, and get told no. It would be nice to have somewhere else in the alliance that I can send these people.

We operate on the borders and behind enemy lines in order to accomplish objectives, such as destroying CSAAs, defanging cynojammers, and reinforcing systems. All with small handful of newgals that are mostly less than 15 million skillpoints. We believe that it is possible to excel at EVE using superior organization instead of overwhelming numbers of skillpoints or gigantic blobs. We succeed not because we're elitist and high-skillpoint, but instead because we have the flexibility and patience to teach each and every newgal to be effective.

Interested in joining our ranks? Stop by our IRC channel to have a conversation.

We still have way more opportunities and space than we currently have the pilots to take advantage of. We'd love to share our opportunities with a culturally compatible corp, if there's one out there.

New year, new post. Still looking for that one perfect addition to the SOUND family. Internet tough guys and bigots need not apply.

We are closing our search at this time, because we were unable to find an interested corporation that was a mutual fit. Instead, two of our veteran directors have decided to start the corporation that we were externally searching for.

If you're a veteran pilot looking for a classy environment, please check out Raising the Bar, SOUND's new corporation for classy veterans.

Moderators, feel free to lock this thread.