Said it before, will say it again - The Bond type rating worked for the 16 of us on my course. A load of us went to SkyEurope [as normal paid employees] to get the ball rolling (they have 16 73Gs on order incidentally) and most of us are back in UKOK working for various companies.
Many Bond students have got lucky with Ryanair - though many have been told they have to complete 100 hours Line Training first. I don't know if this will still be the case as their pilots start to run out out of hours.
There seem to be an increasing number of people these days that will only accept a jet job if it's 5 minutes' drive from their front door.
When I fell off the conveyor belt there were only adverts for A320 jobs. However, a few months later the pendulum swung the other way. I know of one guy who ended up with four job offers when he finished last year - I guess it's just timing.