Importing master data that has a self join

I'm using MDS 2012 and trying to import employee data. Each entity has a domain attribute with their supervisor.

What import pattern do I need to use? When I try to load everything in one shot, MDS import batches show errors because it can't find supervisor records that don't exist. Do I need to load the employee data in batches from the top of the org structure downward, running each batch first so that supervisors always exist before their reports?

I happen to be using SSIS to do this, but I'm really interested in knowing how MDS wants to see the data when there is a self join.