The classic quality of experience debate......!
It all depends on who you ask of course and there is never a "one size fits all" answer to anything...., but I was caught as a line check airman right in the middle of the big "pay for training" boom in the states and here is my take on it after training hundreds in a period of six years.....!
What I found is that is not the total amount of hours but rather the first flight hours of an individual that seem to make the difference.., those formative first 1,000 hours let's say just to place a number on it, those hours that form the base of the experience upon the rest of an individual experience will be built eventually.
Those pilots that flew those first formative flight hours on A/C's with minimal or non- existent automation did a lot better on the overall handling of the airplane, it was a lot easier to train a pilot that flew checks single pilot at night on a Queen Air and now was flying as an F/O on a Citation, than it was to train the typical "puppy mill" P2P individual with a couple thousand hours of nothing but CRT's in front of him/her, regardless of if PIC/SIC.