Re networking. It's the great intangible and the most important skill you'll ever need as a 200 hour pilot, but it can't be taught and it definitely can't be learned over a public internet forum because nobody wants to share their secrets.
The basic skill is to be a real people person, never moan, be everyone's best mate, hang out in places where important people hang out and make yourself useful.
You'd be amazed what kind of opportunities come up when you're an FI, especially at a smaller club in the vicinity of a large airport where management pilots like to go have a drink at the aero club on a friday night. In the London area, that would be places like Andrewsfield or Stapleford.
I had only been an FI for a few weeks when I went for a celebratory drink with a lad who had just passed his PPL that day, and I got randomly chatting to a guy at the warbirds bar in Auckland, anyway he ended up confessing that he was looking for a house sitter for next week while he was on vacation - I put my hand up for that - only later did I realize he was the head honcho in charge of recruitment at Air New Zealand. I got a good case of merlot and a very handy mobile number in my contacts list as a consequence of that one! My life subsequently took other paths but it's a good example of what "can" happen when you least expect it.
Networking aside, the FI to turboprop to jet route is still the way to go in my book. It's a slow and grinding and financially painful road to the top, but as long as you're a good guy, ticking over those hours at the rate of a few a week, and you're obviously staying current in some form of flying - the golden phone call WILL come. Yes you'll be gutted more than once when some chancer who you trained with, gets lucky and gets a jet job with 200 hours. You'll feel better when you realize that he's the one out of 10 who got lucky and all your other old mates are not even flying at all.
Instructing is slow and torturous and deeply unfashionable these days, and yet still, despite all the P2F hype and bull**** that flies around the forum these days, it's still the only almost-guaranteed way to the RHS. Do it and you won't regret it.