How long would you estimate it takes someone to "properly learn version control"? When I work with very junior developers they pick up git quite well in a week or two at most. Beyond that almost every team I work with uses their own special homegrown git workflow anyway.

I don't mean to put you down for you requirements but git is really really easy to learn. It would be a shame to miss out on a talented developer for something an otherwise well qualified developer could learn in a weekend.