Well, it took me 5 years to get an interview after my first application, I had about 6000 hours widebody time.
Australians and english got interviews with much less experience than that because of their passports, but that has all changed the last couple of years, now anybody with a good experience can get an interview.
I respect the recruiting team, the are from many different countries and they do a great job ( they only screwed up when they hired me).
Just heard the boss of recruiting, a POM, has resigned because he was told by TCK to lower the standards, he showed us that he has a backbone and I respect him for that, hope he doesn't give up training, we would all miss him.
The management of EK sucks and doesn't give a shi* about their pilots, but I can tell you the pilots are great to work with and I enjoyed the righthand seat with all these different cultures in the flightdeck.