I've not seen weak candidates that got hired get much better even after extensive coaching and pairing.
I was very much a weak candidate when hired for my first programming job after university. No experience with shipping code or working on large code bases, virtually no experience with C++ or OpenGL/3D programming for an application where the core was doing 3D visualisation in C++, minimal relevant domain knowledge etc. etc. And I'd really like to think that not only did I get much better in the first 6 month I was there on a temp contract, but that I kept getting better in every aspect of the profession for the rest of the 3 years I was at that job. And even being on the other side of the 'table' I've seen people who could hardly code at all turn out perfectly acceptable code 6 month later.
It doesn't even take "extensive coaching and pairing", just a lot of nudging and pointing in the right direction, some well timed pieces of good advice and the occasional bollocking when they're being just a bit extra dense.
I was very much a weak candidate when hired for my first programming job after university. No experience with shipping code or working on large code bases, virtually no experience with C++ or OpenGL/3D programming for an application where the core was doing 3D visualisation in C++, minimal relevant domain knowledge etc. etc. And I'd really like to think that not only did I get much better in the first 6 month I was there on a temp contract, but that I kept getting better in every aspect of the profession for the rest of the 3 years I was at that job. And even being on the other side of the 'table' I've seen people who could hardly code at all turn out perfectly acceptable code 6 month later.
It doesn't even take "extensive coaching and pairing", just a lot of nudging and pointing in the right direction, some well timed pieces of good advice and the occasional bollocking when they're being just a bit extra dense.