Flight experience requirements at any airline are completely arbitrary. Nobody cares how much TPIC time you have. You're not going to perform simple repetitive tasks in a relative order any better than the next guy just because you have a few more or less hours sitting on your butt watching an autopilot do all the work.

Typically internal recs go a long way, but I know of folks getting hired without internals. Like any job that you want just keep updating your information and wait. It took me years of application updates to get my last job. You have to understand that almost every airline has more applications on file than employed pilots. There is no shortage of qualified applicants and I don't foresee a day where that's ever going to be an issue.