From my experience the number of hours is not really as important as what types of experience you have.
I would rather have a guy that has 500 hours TT with some turbine time from the real world than 1500 hours in an R22 around the pattern, I would be looking for types of aircraft flown and what kinds of work he's done more than how many hours he has.
Of course I would have to fly with both of them and see how they do, as there are always 500 hours pilots that can do better than some 5000 hour pilots, flight time is not everything.