The value of experience is all relative. As many here have mentioned in the past professional pilots came from a broad area of experience. They started out as instructors, crop dusters, night piston cargo, military pilots and plenty of other forms of aviation.

Today it seems that many of those kinds of jobs are going away and HR departments seem to prefer long institutionalized pilots with an exclusive part 121 background.

Airline captains use to say that I had a good background as a former forest service and Alaskan bush pilot. Good for what? HR departments do not care if you can properly load a beaver on a beach or that I have over a thousand hours of piston single pilot IFR over the cascades. All they want are 28 year old automaton RJ captains.

Maybe hiring fads will change? I doubt it though.

Skyhigh