Initial Proposal

Overview

The goal of the IXP-Fellowship initiative is to incentivize organizations to hire trained, but inexperienced Drupal developers. 

How it should work

In order to achieve the goal, several pieces must be identified and utilized, including:

• Training opportunities for new developers.
• Utilize jobs.drupal.org to provide a place where organizations can find this pool of new, trained developers.
• Utilize the Drupal contribution system to reward organizations for hiring new inexperienced developers.
• Provide frameworks and guidance for organizations on how to develop, onboard, and train inexperienced developers.
• Provide an exit criteria to ensure inexperienced developers have successfully transitioned into the junior developer role.

Initial thoughts on contribution credits

In order for this initiative to successfully utilize the contribution credit system, it is believed that "guardrails" must be put into place. Examples:

1. Organizations can only be awarded contribution credits for hiring an inexperienced developer for an minimum engagement length.
2. Organizations can only be awarded contribution credits for hiring an inexperienced developer for a paid position.
3. Positions and candidates must be posted on jobs.drupal.org and marked as “inexperienced Drupal developers”. 
4. Organizations can only be awarded contribution credits for hiring an inexperienced developer to roles that have access to experienced developers for mentoring. 
5. Once hired in an inexperienced role, new developers will be required to post a minimum number of blog posts on a new "New Drupal developer blog" on Drupal.org.  
6. Once hired in an inexperienced role, new developers will be required to earn a minimum number of Drupal contribution credits.