BEA & BOAC for many years employed hamble cadets with very low hours on aircraft that were considerably more labour intensive and arguably harder to operate aircraft without too many problems (excepting PI perhaps?) for many years.
But there were some differences! A Hamble cadet would join as Second Officer and spend a lot of the first two years or so line flying observing from the jump seat and being supervised by a Captain and Senior First Officer who between them probably had 20,000 hours of experience!
You also had a restricted take off and landing card to start with - only by day in light crosswinds in CAVOK with supervisory Captain and then with extra training the restrictions would be progressively reduced.
Compare this to the newbie cadet now who is thrown into the RHS of a two crew aircraft after minimal training!
By the way I was a Hamble cadet - the 18 month course there was second to none and included 50 hours in a basic Comet simulator (what we'd now call MCC I guess). Not everyone passed the course - if you didn't come up to the required standard (which was well above the minimum for a licence) you got the "chop". Hamble was designed to select and train future airline Captains - on the whole they did a good job.