However, the position that our team is in, we have junior developers who need a lot of mentoring to pick up pace, so to say!
Business is NOT a school
Private coding schools/bootcamps/online programs exist for that. If person needs to pick up a lot, how this person ended up in your business on the first place? It's called interns not jr.
Mentoring = coaching = teaching = internship
You need a program (curriculum) tailored to a specific student and a plan. What are lowest requirements, what student knows and what are your goals, what should they know and be able to do at the end? Have a clear definition and answers to all questions.
Before teaching someone else - teach yourself
Are you a right person to teach? Are you both a professional software engineer and a teacher? If no, it is better to spend your money not on paying them salaries and wasting your expensive time, but paying for their education. Let someone else do this job and you will get a valuable asset at the end.
1. Bring ONLY right people to the team
You need people who are adults and independent, who can learn on their own very fast and not follow your rules waiting for your orders. I don't have students in a business and whenever I have juniors to mentor, I bring only those who know the basics, have discipline, are extremely hungry and foolish, who will keep learning and moving forward with me or without me. I will be just there to help them achieve their OWN goal faster.
NEVER invest your time and never surround yourself with people who are not aligned with your values and don't want to move forward on their own, who DON'T have personal goals. Don't be desperate and don't just bring people into the team only because you "need some help". You can wait and keep searching for a right person.
All top bootcamps have a strong selection process. Real business is not an exception.
2. Natural selection - test as many people as possible and winner will pick himself
Be a cheap date - test as many people as possible as fast as possible. You don't need to offer them a job, bring them to your community, add them to some of your private Slack channels, give them some test tasks and learning tasks and just follow them, see what they are doing and how active they are, and how do they progress. At the end strongest survives and you just pick the winner.
Time to times I just send them some blog posts and video tutorials or talks and later just ask them about what have they learned (Sometimes I didn't had a time to watch specific video or read an article myself, so it is a win-win, I save a lot of time and get a short summary at the end)
P.S.
How Great leaders inspire action? - Simon Sinek - TED
You can read different blogs from different online educational platforms or bootcamps like Flatiron School to get some more insights.