My situation is similar to yours, older low time pilot who qualified a while ago. I have also had one interview and sim assessment and to be honest I completely messed up the sim and it came as no surprise when I received the thanks but no thanks reply.
I was invited to an assessment last year but was away on holiday with my family and was unable to attend and they did not have alternative dates available.
I was invited to another assessment the year before that but my luck struck like a bolt of lightning, I picked up some sort of virus and spent 24 hours before the assessment either sat on the toilet or with my head down the toilet. Again no alternate dates were offered when I was forced to cancel.
The training school that I did my training with contacted me about 18 months ago with a view to recommending me to a well known regional airline which I was delighted at. We went through the list of requirements and I was ticking every box until we came to the bit that required at least 50 hours flight time in the previous 12 months which I do not have so the recommendation did not happen.
I recently spoke to an airline pilot recruiter who told me that the reason I had not been called for interview for a Pilot Apprentice position is that my flying currency is not good enough.
From this you can see that there are those willing to take on the older applicants but my luck and flying currency have not been good.
I do not believe that age is a huge issue but flying currency is, it’s not enough to have the CPL, MEIR and medical all in date and current, you need to be in regular flying practice. This is fine if you have just finished training or are working as an instructor, para dropper or survey pilot etc but to pay for the sort of currency they require is pretty prohibitive.
My final point is that there may well be a shortage of experienced rated pilots with 1000 hours or more in the book, there is not and never will be a shortage of low hours individuals looking for their first job. In the UK the flying schools are churning out low hours ladies and gents at a large rate. The training capacity is well in excess of demand at the moment, we recently saw the demise of a fairly large training organisation (PTT) but we would have to see more go before there is a balance between training capacity and demand. I am sure that the situation is similar across many other nations.