I was hired in 2005. I did have good quals thou, military pilot, MBA degree and major airline time. Starting pay was $27.2K/yr back then.
I went to a job fair where Jerry and Derinda (NJA HR staff) had a booth setup. They looked like the Maytag repair people
SouthWest, America West, Cathy Pacific all had long lines. NetJets had no line. I spoke to Derinda, gave her my resume and LOR from a friend at NJA and she immediately said "we'll send you an application ASAP". Back then once you got the app you had to seriously screw up the interview to not get hired. The job fair was on a Saturday, Monday Derinda called me and said my app was in the mail, and because it was a holiday the app was being taken to the post office so it'd go out that day. And she wanted to go ahead and schedule the interview, if the day I wanted was booked she'd overbook it for me. So yea, they were having trouble getting highly qualified candidates to work at NetJets.
Luckily I got the "tech" interview, I only got asked 2 questions I hadn't already read about on an interview website. The HR interview would have been tougher for someone who's not a good BS artist. Questions like "If you were a color what color would you be and why?"
You definitely didn't have to be a rocket scientist to get hired back then. We had a couple of young pilots in my indoc class with no pure jet time, just turboprop. I was aware of the contract offer that was overwhelmingly voted down, I took a chance figuring something better would come along, and it did.
I actually enjoyed the type of flying we did, I had never even seen the inside of a private jet until my NJA interview. But the last few years just got to be too crazy, to the point it affected my health and I had to pull the medical ripcord.