Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself: Recruitment and Training in the Sinestro Corps

Welcome back to Funding the Kryptonite, a blog that will take a look at comic book super villains and discuss them from a business perspective.

I’m going to start a series of blog posts centered on the Sinestro Corps in DC Comics. Today’s blog post will take a view of the organization from a recruitment perspective and how their talent acquisition and integration process works for them.

First of all, who are these guys?:

The Sinestro Corps is an organization modeled after the Green Lantern Corps from the DC universe. The goal of the Sinestro Corps, headed by former Green Lantern Thaal Sinestro, to wage war against the Green Lanterns and their overseers, the Guardians of the Universe. Each member wears a yellow power ring, an immensely strong weapon that can create hard-light constructs from the thoughts of the wearer. These rings are fuelled by the emotion of fear, which is collected by a central power battery and converted into the energy of the rings. The Sinestro Corps seeks to recruit members based on their “ability to instill great fear”.

Intergalactic headhunting:

To fill vacancies, organizations either undertake to do their own hiring through the use of their Human Resources department or outsource the job to recruitment agencies. In both situations, these firms must undertake to put together a job description of what qualities they are looking for in the ideal candidate, the responsibilities of the role, and other necessary details. This helps narrow down the potential talent pool so that theoretically unqualified applicants do not waste the time of interviewers. The Sinestro Corps has a great advantage in this part of the process because the job description (instill fear) and required experience (ability to instill fear) are pretty straightforward. Additionally, interviewers must take steps to verify previous experience, perform tests on applicants to determine cultural fit, and otherwise see if the possible hire will do the job well. The Sinestro Corps has a very streamlined system whereby the artificial intelligence of the rings will, upon the death of the current bearer, pilot itself out into the universe programmed with a directive to locate a candidate with the required fear-inducing qualifications (which it is capable of detecting) and forcibly recruits them into the Corps. This ensures a minimal period of less than 100% employment for all 7200 positions within the Corps, and prevents great talent material from going to waste in other organizations.

Training for terror:

The other major element to successful recruitment is that, once you’ve found a good candidate, the firm needs to be able to train them in the particular comings and goings of that organization and that particular position within that organization. This process is known as onboarding, which I will discuss more at length in another entry. Part of the goal of the recruitment process is to minimize the number of people who wash out of the onboarding process by preemptively making sure they have the skills and attitude to fit within the company. The Sinestro Corps offers its own onboarding process, headed by one of their top Human Resources talents named Lyssa Drak. Her role in the organization is to take new recruits, after being given basic training in how to use the ring, and tell them morale boosting stories of successful members of the Corps. Once the recruit has been prepared through this, their rings are completely drained of power and they are placed inside a sealed pod. The only way out, and thus fully integrate into the Sinestro Corps, is by being able to master their own fear and use it to reignite their power ring and escape the pod. Failure to do so is implied to result in death by starvation, leaving the ring to find another worthy candidate.

Ring slinging:

Successful organizations need talent to continue operating at a high level, and the recruitment and training process is how you find and integrate these people. An easygoing company like Google may not want to hire a hard-headed Type A personality due to the cultural clash, and so too does the Sinestro Corp have a vision in mind of those they want in their ranks. These processes make sure that they truly get those who are best suited to instilling great fear.

“In Blackest Day, In Brightest Night,

Beware Your Fears Made Into Light.

Let Those Who Try And Stop What’s Right

Burn Like My Power, Sinestro’s Might” –Sinestro Corps Oath

  

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