The business in which I am involved sees a more or less constant stream of well qualified pilots be called up for airline interviews which include a short flight in a simulator involving raw data manoeuvres. It is not a tough test but actually very good for observing the candidates potential as first officer in terms of manual flying skill.
In earlier times I was given a similar short test in a 737-400 simulator in Europe by the chief pilot of a well known German airline as part of a PARC contract application. That particular test consisted, among other manoeuvres like a raw data ILS, climbing and descending turns at set rates but with landing flap down and flying right on Vref. Interestingly a similar series of manoeuvers used to be conducted in the old link trainers decades ago and were called Pattern A and B. It was aimed at assessing accuracy of instrument scan and how quickly the inevitable errors that occured, were rectified.
A number of experienced pilots who had been captains on glass cockpit wide-bodies, failed the assessment because they had lost all touch with manual raw data skills.
The sad part was these highly experienced captains would have made safe and reliable pilots in their new job regardless of their assessment short-comings, if only the their previous airline concerned had included a steady diet of manual non-automatics during cyclic simulator sessions. And not just an occasional hand flown ILS either.
The chief pilot of the German airline who had the job of assessing these applications could only judge the candidates on what he saw on the day. When it was clear the candidates instrument flying ability was woeful on raw data, he had little choice but to say thanks but no thanks. I mean, what else could he have done? Maybe allow them to use the autopilot and other automatics for the whole simulator assessment and say well done that man - you flew beautifully (or the autopilot did, anyway!).
We all know there are rare occasions when it is vital to switch off the automatics goodies and manually correct some severe out of trim situation like wake turbulence encounter in IMC or anything else too horrible to contemplate. For that a pilot needs basic pure flying ability. And that is what an assessing authority is looking for during a candidates flight simulator test.
With the major part of a type rating on say the A320 or B737NG being on the automatics systems operation, and the line flying being the same, operations management of an airline should not ignore that pure flying skills are equally important as automatics monitoring. How those manual flying skills are kept current is clearly a matter of personal choice.
It is when an airline pays lip service to this but then makes no regular and effective provision for this during simulator cyclic training, is where pilots are let down by their management.