Personal opinion..
I learned more from flying a season in the canyon that I would have instructing for five more years. I instructed for a couple years before I went to fly the ditch, so that may have prepared me to better soak up the learning experience. I was giving dual in IFR Multi-engine ops before I made the leap. CFI'ing is a great foundation but if you have at least 500-1000 dual given I think you will get more out of the fast paced, challenging environment you will find out there, especially in the single pilot world of the SFAR (canyon flying). Hands down, I have never had more REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE than jumping out of the CFI sand box and into the spotlingt as a single pilot part 135 driver in a very dynamic and unforgiving environment. The weather can be challenging, mixing it up with several different aircraft types in a narrow corridor is anything but straight and level, and it was a lot of fun realizing how far you had come in such a short while. The trick is to get in and get out in a year. About 1000 hours is the point of diminishing returns I thought.
Get a job based out of Vegas because living there is better and the type of flying is more comprable to regular airline flying than doing tours out of GCN or the lake all day. Of course multi-engine is better but you may have to realistically start out flying singles depending on your time. Try to get the single pilot multi jobs, as you will get the most experience for your time. FO on a DH-6 is nice too for turbine time, but I have always weighted PIC as most valuable. A lot would disagree, saying turbine is better. I think turbine FO is better than SEL PIC, but it's a hard call with MEL PIC or turbine SIC.
Good luck!
