It's hard to tell. You sometimes see f-teen drivers with only a few thousand hours get hired right away (or with 500 hrs and one year at a regional to prove they can fly bigger planes) and then a heavy USAF pilot with many thousands of hours, evaluator time, squadron commander, global air operations into sketchy locations, not even get an interview because of "better qualified" applicants like the handful we've seen here who have a fraction of the flight time and almost no TPIC.

If the mil guys were all getting interviews but then not getting hired, I'd say yea their background might get them preference just to get the interview. But I've seen enough highly experienced mil pilots not even get an interview to think they're not all getting preferential treatment. And of course at the interview, everyone is "qualified" so you gotta fit the mold to get the CJO no matter where you came from.

In fact, I'd say that a "normal" military career progression can actually look bad because the normal periods of non-flying during a typical military career can look very confusing to both HR and pilot interviewers who don't understand how military assignments work. Even the most dedicated pilot is going to spend time non-flying, which on paper may appear to be time out of the business or show a lack of true interest in the flying job. The reality is that mil pilots have very little control over when their non-flying assignments will be, and god help the poor slobs like me who get tagged with a drone job as their last assignment before retirement. You can imagine how that goes with a clueless interviewer... "So, explain to me one more time why you have only 6.9 hours in the last 5 years? An 8 day work week flying 24/7/365 combat ops as a drone pilot sure looks like you're not a real pilot any more, so why exactly do you think you could work here?" I got that from 5 out of 8 hiring teams I talked to, got 1 "get 500 hours anywhere else then re-apply", and I took the better of the 2 who were willing to take a chance hiring me. I'm not sure that amounts to preferential hiring for military pilots.