With the greatest respect to instructors, I came up through his route myself, it is apparent that airlines are having to move down the food chain. First choice would be experienced, type rated pilots from companies a tier below, then medium jet experience before moving onto military and turbo prop regional airline pilots. Flying school instructors would be well down the list for direct entry into an airline and would normally expect to have to go through a regional or biz jet job before getting a look in.
Back in the 1960s, airline recruiters were looking at PPL holders as potential employees and offering them CPL training. Could it happen again ?