Last year I observed assessment tests of 12 pilots of different nationalities who were gathered together to see if they could get direct entry commands into a Japanese 737 operator. The sim checks were dead easy. CAVOK, wind calm - Take off, circuit and land. Then another take off, engine failure at V2, radar vector for ILS and land. Weather 500 ft cloud base, 3000 metres vis.
The catch? The assessing officers required raw data, and 75% of the flight hand flown. With two notable exceptions, the standard of flying accuracy of these experienced pilots was dismal. Without the availibility of the flight director and autothrottle, and autopilot these chaps were quite unable to fly within instrument rating tolerances most of the time in what was the easiest tests I have seen. All except one were given jobs, though.
No small wonder that airlines demand full use of automatics to keep the pilots from making fools of themselves.
So what is to be done about it? A big fat nothing, that's what. It's the way of the aviation world judging by many of the posts on Pprune.