I personally did it in the SIM last September and you finish having a ME-IR not an MEP-IR (which if you apply to some jobs is a problem) . I then found a job in February so it's seems that it didn't influenced in my case.
Nevertheless I never heard anything about PBN privilege so I don't know l for you.
Note that if you don't find a job and have to revalidate again in one year, you most probably will have to do 2 hours of retraining in the plane !