Do any airlines hire "pilots" with no previous flying experience?
Lufthansa does. They actually prefer people they can train themselves, so they never learned things which Lufthansa considers bad practice.

This becomes impossible if the airline grows quickly. Therefore, all the new carriers (Etihad or Vueling, for example) need to rely on hiring certified pilots.

See Lufthansa-Pilot.DE (only in German but speaking German is a requirement anyway).

Thanks, Danny, for the link. Lufthansa has now adopted English as their corporate language, so I wonder how firm the German language requirement still is.