| I think an apprentice role with: - a real chance and a clear path to 'upgrading' to a dev role - generally good integration with the team (AKA not a person 'over there') - mentoring & pair programming (for example for bug fixes) - time scheduled for learning Can be both attractive for an inexperienced applicant and very useful for a team. Just note that if you take an apprentice or even intern, then you have a responsibility of teaching and helping that person grow. Also note that some of the things you mentioned, specifically QA and documentation, are quite hard to do well. There needs to be some guidance. The danger is that people just/only give an apprentice tasks that nobody else wants to do. Some of that is fine, but I've seen people give interns/apprentices tasks which required expertise but were 'boring'. This is a failure in my eyes, because now your apprentice is overwhelmed and demotivated. |