We recently advertised for a new FO and didn't have many applicants, only one person on here contacted me about it. It's a decent salary, we get well looked after, it has good benefits and there is lots of flying (5 aircraft), we also have pretty good job security as the company is doing very very well.
I appreciate there are many unfortunate souls out there who have put in many many hours of research into different operators and sending out tailor made letters and CV's and not getting anywhere, but I think they are the "silent few".
To go and spend 20k on a type rating with no interview lined up for an operator of the type is quite remarkable.
I know our boss would be gobsmacked if he interviewed someone who had just paid 20k on an Airbus type rating just as a bit of "speculation".
PS we currently have no vacancies, the point I'm making is that when we were advertising not many people saw the advert.