When it comes to employment, education, or just plain enslavement, everyone has to start somewhere. Whether it's voluntary or involuntary, auspicious or lowly, military or business, tropes concerning recruitment or induction can all be found in this index.
Tropes
- Absurdly Exclusive Recruiting Standards: This employer accepts only the very best of the best - sometimes to the point of impracticality.
- Achievement Test of Destiny: An all-important exam in which performing well will have you recruited by the most selective groups.
- A Real Man Is a Killer: "To join this organized combat force, you have to kill someone to prove your mettle" variant.
- Boxed Crook: A prisoner doing time is recruited for an extremely dangerous job in exchange for their freedom.
- Conscription: Enforced recruitment, usually in the military, usually with strict penalties for ignoring your selection.
- Deadly Graduation: Prospective Professional Killers have to prove themselves with a "practical examination" before joining an organization.
- Devil's Job Offer: Satan himself literally offers employment.
- Fantastic Recruitment Drive: A group with weird and wonderful powers goes looking for new members with similar traits.
- Gang Initiation Fight: Someone looking to join a group has to fight for their place.
- Goodness Exam: Character is expected to do something good to prove their affiliation.
- Got Volunteered: When the leader of a group/organization calls for a volunteer for an unpleasant, or down right dangerous, job, an unwilling member is "recomended" by their companions as the best one suited for the job.
- Hired for Their Looks: A new employee gets a job based on attractiveness rather than real qualifications.
- If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: Character is expected to do something evil to prove their affiliation.
- Incomprehensible Entrance Exam: Getting into this job requires an introductory test that doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.
- Initiation Ceremony: Typically marks the point at which the "recruitment" process ends and the candidate is considered to have joined.
- Initiation Quest: The player character of a video game tries to join an exclusive club and has to jump through a lot of hoops to be allowed in.
- Job's Only Volunteer: when a person has a job solely because they are the only one who wanted it.
- Join or Die: Refusing this job offer will be met with instant death.
- Knighting: Formally being made a knight (sometimes while being recruited into a knightly order).
- Lowered Recruiting Standards: An ongoing emergency forces recruiters to accept candidates they'd normally reject.
- Mutant Draft Board: A regulatory organization that forces superhumans to join.
- New Meat: A recent recruit.
- Press-Ganged: Need to recruit someone? Just grab someone off the street and force them to join!
- Recruited from the Gutter: An employer finds new personnel on the lowest rungs of the social ladder, usually guaranteeing their loyalty in the process.
- Recruiting the Criminal: Sometimes, the candidate you need for a specialized job is a criminal offender, retired or otherwise.
- Recruitment by Rescue: A potential ally and/or employee has to be bailed out of danger before they can work for you.
- Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: Instead of recruiting adults for saving the world, teenagers and kids are inducted instead for some reason.
- Recruiters Always Lie: Military advertising designed to lure in new recruits through blatantly dishonest positive depictions.
- Secretly Earmarked for Greatness: Some employers watch their prospective employees for months or even years before finally recruiting them.
- Secret Test of Thieving Skill: The employer wants to recruit a thief but wants to make sure they're as good as advertised.
- Sworn in by Oath: Joining an organization involves swearing a vow.
- Taking the Veil: A character takes vows and joins a religious community as a nun.
- Trading Bars for Stripes: A convicted criminal is recruited into military service in exchange for their freedom once their tour is done.
- Ultimate Final Exam: A difficult final test of ability before a recruit is judged worthy of joining.
- Unusual Hiring Practices: A company hires based on a set of skills or achievements outside the usual for a job.
- Welcomed to the Masquerade: Someone is told that they're now a member of a secret society, or have been all along and didn't know.
