Your partner is only experiencing what the majority of people encounter when pursuing their first position with an airline. Even in these healthy times of pilot recruitment the market is still very competitive. An article in this months Flyer magazine said that Flybe received over 1300 applications last year for about 70 jobs(if memory serves correct)! There are only a few who are lucky enough to go straight from their MCC and into their first airline flying job. With these sorts of odds I hope your partner did some serious research before parting with £65 000.
If your partner is not a member of BALPA I would recommend him to join as they have some useful information for low hours pilots on how to build hours for the airlines and also information from the airlines on what they want from applicants.
Good luck to both you and your partner and hopefully he'll get a break soon.