I think sim checks are essential to see how well a guy operates under a little bit of pressure particularly if you want to give pilots, globally, the chance to get a job with your airline.
Yep, everyone has a licence but they come from widely different training backgrounds and with very different operational experiences. The licences they have come from many different countries that apply many different standards. If you have a limited recruitment outlook, a lot of airlines do, it makes the choice easier. If say you only recruited from other employers known to have the highest standards in the industy, you wouldn't need to give a sim check because the guys you get would be known quantities. All you would have to check is whether they have the personal quantities to fit into your organisation. Sadly you would be excluding anyone with a different background. That strategy tends to work best if you only need to recruit only a few pilots every year and can 'cherry pick' from others.
There are good doctors and bad doctors but they all have a licence. I bet you'd prefer to have the good doctor carrying out your liver transplant rather than the guy that just scraped through his training. Its just the same with flying. If you are going to recruit globally, I'd rather spend a bit of cash on a sim to find out how competent someone is rather than having to deal with a more difficult problem later.
