Ronin, don't know about that airline but at ASA back around.... 1999 we were in a bind for captains because we switched to the ICAO capt mins (3,000 total + some other crap) and there was an "off the street" captain new hire in the upgrage class I was in. This was on the EMB 120 at the time and our director of trng was a ball buster. One of those how many rivets are on the hot section kind of guys......
The captain newhire was a very sharp guy with previous 121 experience and he struggled. It is an enormous undertaking to learn a pain in the butt aircraft all the time you are being preped to have a captain level knowledge of the SP (standard practice) company regs, policy, etc.

So, if you have 121 experience and the program is not too much of a ball buster, you can do it. If it is a difficult aircraft or tough program... maybe not.

The other thing to consider is, if they are hireing off the street captains, that should mean they have exhausted their current FO's who qualify to upgradge. Consider the right seat for trng, do the IOE maybe a month on line then, put in for the upgrade. Rumor has it at ASA, when we had our off the street program this is what most of them ended up doing.

Bonne Chance