I'm sick of how so many people on this site are so obsessed with equating number of hours with the amount of experience. It isn't that simple..it's the quality of hours you got, and how you got them that matters...and in that regard, every single pilot is pretty much different.
Pilot A=750 hours: Got ratings and first 250 at a rural uncontrolled airport. Flew Grandaddy's plane for 500 hours single engine VFR using sectionals and VFR flight following in uncongested rural airspace.
Pilot B=500 hours: Got ratings and first 250 at a heavily congested flight school in DFW airspace, 250 dual given to foreign students with poor language skills, filed IFR on all his cross countries and with all his inst. students, shoots approaches, flies DPs and STARs every day.
I know and have done time buliding with 750 and 1000 hour pilots who are applying to regionals who don't know how to fly DPs and STARs and are barely current on instruments b/c they got their hours putting around VFR in daddy's plane or instructing at rural schools. I know 250 hour pilots who are current as hell, and because of where they trained and how they went about their training (i.e. long IFR x-countries and approaches in Class B and C airports all the time) they are 100x more competent to pass a regional sim check.
Who do you think is more qualified to fly for a regional--the 250-300 hour pilot who flew DPs and STARs in around DFW every day or a 500-750 hour pilot who got all his hours f-ing around VFR in a relative's 150. You can say all you want about weather, experience, etc. etc. etc. but the bottom line is it's more about what you did to get your hours.
Just giving an example of how sometimes hours don't necessarily always equate perfectly with competence or experience...it's just an arbitrary number that doesn't mean crap unless you look at what kind of hours they are.
I flew the other day with a guy with almost 500 hrs who had never flown a DP or STAR.