No it's no where near as bad as what people say on here. I'm not saying it's a good situation out there, but pprune is well known for being full of moaners. As said above, the majority of the moaners are people who don't have jobs, and want to put you off training.
If you are a good pilot, a job will come around for you eventually. The catch is, you have to do the training to find out how good you are. If you are bad, the odds are not in your favour.
My advice to anyone right now would be to go and work in the office (ops for example) of a smallish company for a couple of years. Then start training part time and continue the job part time. If they are going to hire any 200hr newbie...it'll be you! Even the big airlines like easyJet and jet2 hire (hired?) 200hr pilots from within, although it's highly competitive, so like I said earlier...if you're a bad pilot the odds are against you.
I've seen this method work before, but you just got to pick the right company to work for. Working as Ryanair cabin crew for a few years, for example, would not give you a job in the flight deck. Same would probably go for Virgin who want experienced pilots.
Of course, you could always apply for a tagged airline scheme.
Last edited by pudoc; 5th Sep 2013 at 20:54.