Was it even possible? What would drive a person to become a mercenary rather than a bandit or something else?
Could some random person be trained/equipped by a mercenary group? Would they invest that kind of time and resources into someone like that?
There were two inescapable factors of the German military situation in the early sixteenth century: one, the Holy Roman Empire had no real standing army, as such, and princes were far more eager to pay off any commitments than to do the work of raising an army for the emperor. Two, the Ottomans were right there. Consequently, the Landsknechte ended up not just one of the most formidable late medieval/early modern "mercenary" flavors, but almost certainly subject to the biggest PR campaign. For every Johann Eberlin von Gunzburg, who denounced the Landsknecht as "soulless" and "living entirely in the power of the devil," there were piles of woodcuts and songs from prominent artists--and from warriors themselves, in some cases!--selling what we now know is a rather romanticized view of the Landsknecht.
As songs like Jörg Graff's 1518 "Ein schön Lied von der Kriegsleut Orden" (A nice song about the orders of men at war) would have it, the Landsknecht were the new, improved crusading military orders of chivalric yesteryear. Among themselves, they were "free men of war," an equal brotherhood at arms. Within society more broadly, they were a cohesive elevated status, with respect and a chance for monetary gain beyond their station. Songs tended to stress the honour and adventure of knechting (yeah, I verbed the noun), not to mention the accoutrements of women and wine that went along with the itinerant lifestyle.
And for a good while in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the publicity worked. When Landsknecht commander Georg von Holle recruited for a contracted (i.e. pre-funded) 3000 soldiers around Wildeshausen in 1555, he attracted almost twice as many hopefuls and had to turn the rest away!
But the picture scholars are increasingly painting of the Landsknechte within individual companies are notably less egalitarian than the ideal. (To say nothing of Eberlin's accusations of the Landsknecht actual lifestyle of "whoring, adultery, rape, gluttony, drunkenness...stealing, robbing, and murder", or the company of soldiers that randomly burned down the estates they passed on the way to Münster in 1535--or that eager propagandist Graff, above, composed his lyrics after being blinded).
First, Landsknechts came from a full range of social classes, from farmhand day labourers up to the nobility. Apparently Emperor Maximilian I had some difficulties wrangling the imperial princes into serving as commanders, but the petty nobility and imperial knights (Reichsritter) were more eager. Niklas Stör's famous series of propagandistic woodcuts features a series of urban artisans who all join the Landsknecht for the money. Landsknecht lyricist Georg Niege, meanwhile, had actually attended and even graduated from the University of Marburg (graduation required significant extra money, to the extent that many university students just went for the coursework and not the degree) before joining up.
And these social stratifications in the "outside" world were reflected within the Landsknecht. The famously flamboyant Landsknecht dress code--colorful and stylish and adorned--resulted from imperial decrees excusing them from the sumptuary laws that applied to other Germans. Except--the privilege only applied to Landsknecht of higher ranks. Common soldiers were still banned from wearing slit and slashed (ergo more colorful and adorned) clothing. And "rank" meant outside social status, not just military promotion: news Landsknechte from the landed nobility and the urban patriciate typically leapfrogged their lesser-class counterparts in terms of military rank and especially pay.
The popularity of Landsknecht service, as suggested above, did raise the barriers for entry. Since there was no standing army and funding was bare minimum (...and company commanders strove to undercut that even more, to pocket the rest; Thomas Brady has described the Landsknecht as a multilayer crediting organization who "made possible wars that no one could afford"), regment commanders and their subrecruiters frequently required that all comers be able to supply their own arms.
We know this was a barrier to entry for many by looking at recruiting patterns from just after the period OP asked about, the second and third quarters of the 16th century. A divide develops in the geographic origins of soldiers by type and rank: more mounted cavalry of higher status and better supplies (e.g. horses) come from central, north, east principalities; lower-paid (ergo lesser-class) infantry were recruited more heavily from the south/southwest. This, of course, was because of the larger number of troops--on both sides--who had armed up to fight in the 1524-25 Peasants' War. They evidently already possessed the tools, and perhaps the skills to fight (although non-propaganda sources are not always as keen on the discipline and prowess of certain Landsknecht companies).
The romance of the Landsknechte endured long after their time in the field. By 1600, "Landsknecht/Soldat" dichotomy was popular slang for upstanding versus dishonorable behavior. As the massive bibliography on the Landsknechte that came out of 19th century Germany demonstrates, the legends of brave free men-at-war that emphasized the honor and advanture and minimized the arson, rape, and murder resonated with German nationalist and imperial ambitions. And as Matthias Sprenger has demonstrated, the romanticized view of the Landsknecht was directly appropriated by NSDAP (that would be Nazi) publicists and Freikorps veterans to legitimize the Nazis' status as the true heirs of the German spirit. It's a sobering lesson to historians to delineate the myth from the "reality" of Landsknecht service--but also, to study the power of that myth as a recruiting and propaganda tool in the sixteenth century as well as its later legacy.
Further Reading (in English):
Also related: How much combat would an average mercenary of the time expect to face in their career?
What was the percentage that joined radical sects such as the anabaptist that took control of Münster?
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