From what I was told during the selection process, the recruitment team are geared up to recruit a huge number of pilots into the company over the next few years. The most consistent number I heard was around 200 a year for the next 4-5 years. Thats a lot of people. They also said their aim was to recruit from a "broad spectrum" of experience levels. They have taken the logical step of initially recruiting pilots with previous experience on a/c that BA currently operate to get the new recruits on the line as quickly as possible. Next in the queue are ex-mil guys, and I am almost certain that over the next 12 months the recruitment drive will open up to SSP guys and non-rated DEPs. This was the expectation of the recruitment team. Training capacity is an issue, even with the resources on offer at Cranebank.
Just be glad that BA are not going down the route of ezy and FR as it would be incredibly ahem, "easy" for them to do so, and that would really start to distort the marketplace for UK based pilots.