I never understood why someone would become a radio operator in nowadays aviation business. If you are not with a major/legacy/unionized carrier, you need hours and experience as quickly as possible to master the jungle of international aviation. So the dumbest thing is to start your career as a radio operator - you just loose precious years.
May be the reasoning was different under the A scale, as there was a clear career path to a lot of gold and guys taking the radio operator position already had lots of valuable experience which anyways gave them options in case.