truck flyer- you are correct there, but you miss one obvious point, and I'm probably biased, but have you considered that RYR actually want you to pass their type rating course, as they need people on the line? If they were in the business of purely selling type ratings I could understand, but losing 10% of the their pilot workforce this year alone, is a good enough reason for me to understand why they want to get people online. With the amount of demand for Captains both from DEC and upgrades, they don't have the sim time or manpower to waste on giving a type rating course to someone they feel may not pass.
That said, I don't agree that an older chap is necessarily more of a risk then a younger chap, but I don't do the recruiting. If they see age as a training risk it's their prerogative, they can hide this fact pretty easy as has already been mentioned above, by hiring the odd person over their normal limit. However, I also don't agree that there is such thing as an 'over qualified' instructor. I'm sure that if you put a 200 hr fresh cadet in a sim assessment with an FI of 2000 hours, the FI 'should' be better, but in all honesty I'm sure this isn't as accurate as you might think. FI probably doesn't do a lot of IR flying (and if they do its the student doing it under the 'hood'), hasn't maybe done their MCC in a few years, where as the cadet is straight out of the training. Doesn't change the fact that they should be given the same chance at least.
You don't appear to fall into this bracket, but there are plenty of 200 hr guys that see RYR as a Plan b, c or even d when they finish training. Once they started leaning towards plan d, they are immediately pi$$ed off when RYR don't start begging them for an interview. When you refer to guys sticking up for RYR like it's their own granny, its only due to guys I just described trying to undermine the job those of us already in RYR feel we earned.
Best of luck though.