quindici:
I take a slightly different view, based on my own experience. I'd take the person I knew best and whose capabilities I knew and understood over a walk-in unless that person had substantialy more experience.
Why do I say that ? If you hour build at one place, and do the right things, and show willing, and show them you're the right stuff, they may let you fly ferry flights, and eventually offer pleasure flying work - "to start withand see how you go". If you do non-flying work for another company, and are in the right place at the right time, you may be offered work flying their new helicopter on pleasure flights.
My advice - get the 500 hours, with a mix of traffic flying, solo x-c, dual and solo high altitude at high AUW, and anything else a bit different. Putting one big tick in one box is good, putting lots of smaller ticks in lots of other boxes even better.