It may just be that they are not getting the quality they need from the open market.
I have had a couple of recruiters for major airlines tell me that there are huge numbers of Pilots with frozen ATPLs in the UK who are basically unemployable. It's is possible to get the licence without being good enough to do the job, you just need to have enough money to throw at repeated attempts.
What
. First, there is loads of quality out there. If you really think you are so much better than all the others out there trying to get a job, try it. Second…. the recruiters are not saying that because of a perception of quality, it is because of schemes like MPL mean there are no jobs for these guys. Again, nothing to do with quality.