Willtofly
Firstly, best of luck! My advice is don’t listen to the naysayers and negative comments. Just be yourself and keep sending out those applications. I was in exactly the same situation as you so I’m slightly biased. In the end I got lucky. Right place, right time.
Here’s something to cheer you up. I was in the sim couple of years back and we were looking at UPRT. The trainer mentioned that pilots that still flew outside of the airline seemed to cope well with the recoveries. Seems the old stick and rudder skills counted for something. My point is you have a lot of time both general handling and analysing someone else flying in other words PF and PM in airline speak.
I’m not criticising cadets or MPL candidates but you have plenty of aviation experience. Don’t knock it although you’ll probably find a type rating course intense. I think we all did that came from an instructor background. Hope that helps.
BBK