I say get your CFI....there is nothing difficult about flying the CRJ. Don't pay to learn it when the company will pay you to learn it. Flying the CRJ on the line is far easier than teaching was. But you need to sharpen your thought processes and mostly your instrument skills. One of the best ways to do that is to instruct. You don't have to do it forever...I did it for 10 months at got about 230 hrs of dual given out of it. When I got hired with XJ, I didn't have a ton of hours but I had more than the minimum. Instructing prepared me for the interview and the job.