No personal experience with recruitment, but from reading PPRuNe, and talking to lots of people, I would say that the most important thing is to be able to go to a sim session and know roughly what you are doing. So flying on instruments occassionally wouldn't be a bad thing. Probably of equal use would be paying for some time on a jet sim - although it's not actual flight time, it's closer to the sim that you'll be flying if you're lucky enough to be called in by the airlines. And if you really can't afford that, then just keep playing MS FlightSim.
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