surf0,
I came over to the UK around 7 years ago and had to do the full conversion as I didn't have the 500 hours multi-pilot. No operator will even go near you until you have the JAR CPL / ATPL in your hand. So your only option will be to hire a simulator yourself and have a CAA approved examiner do the test, to be honest I have absolutely no idea how you would go about arranging that. We do corporate visits on our 737/a320 sims at work and that sets people back by approx £1500 per hour per seat so unless you have a partner you will end up paying more than that, you would need some training hours as well. I suspect it may actually be cheaper at the end of the day to do the traditional conversion of groundschool subjects, cpl then ir. Jet hours in your logbook obviously will not harm your applications to airlines over here but are not essential. I did the conversion for a basic CPL/IR and my first job was flying Dash8's which I did for a couple of years and then went straight onto jets with BA which is where I still am. There is no doubt that the opportunities do exist here and with your hours you will be competitive for all turboprop operators, most of the low costs but you may have to wait a year or two for the likes of BA. It is a hard slog but worth it in the end, to answer another question, second officers don't really exist here. At BA you join as an FO, shorthaul takes you all over europe / russia / north africa and longhaul everywhere else.