Design firms don’t just work on design projects; they’re often called on to do double duty as HR personnel, fielding requests from clients for referrals to bright and talented recruits.

Boston-based Fresh Tilled Soil has figured out a way to anticipate the client need for full-time, eager designers with coding chops during projects but also after the formal relationship has ended. Its Apprenticeship in UX gives four paid workers 90 days to balance real-world, real-time client work with road-mapped “challenges,” like redesigning the user experience of an existing system such as Twitter, or crafting a typographic system for Adobe’s own site. In the firm’s own words, Fresh Tilled Soil apprentices are pushed to become “bloody brilliant web and mobile product experts.”

To read the original article: Want To Grow Your Influence? Train Your Interns To Be Hired Away | Co.Design: business + innovation + design