A Developer Scored 97% on a Major Tech Company's Skills Test. What Happened Next Changed My Entire Business.

Gail Weiner

Founder, Simpatico Recruitment

In 2014, after 20 years in tech, working my way from analyst to C-suite, I launched Simpatico Recruitment. I knew the industry inside out. I knew what companies needed. And I knew something was broken.

The talent gap wasn't really a talent gap. It was a geography gap.

Companies were hiring from the same talent pools, competing for the same developers, in the same cities. And then wondering why they couldn't find the skills they needed. The demand was outstripping the supply, not because the skills didn't exist, but because nobody was looking far enough.

"The talent gap wasn't really a talent gap. It was a geography gap."

I didn't fully understand this until 2016, when I placed a Serbian developer living in Cape Town with one of my largest tech clients. He scored 97% on their technical assessment. They hired him immediately.

But here's the thing — he didn't take the role.

Instead, he invited me to Serbia.

I travelled to Belgrade with him, his wife, and their young child. What started as curiosity became conviction. I visited universities. I met developers. I sat in rooms with engineers who had skills that would make most hiring managers weep, and they were available, motivated, and ready to work.

I was struck by something else too. The number of women in STEM across Eastern Europe is significantly higher than what I'd seen in South Africa or the UK. These weren't outliers. This was the norm. Women building software, leading teams, shipping products. Quietly brilliant.

"Women building software, leading teams, shipping products. Quietly brilliant."

The talent wasn't lacking. The exposure was.

I came home and pivoted my entire business. Simpatico Recruitment would no longer just recruit locally. We would connect companies with exceptional developers in Serbia, engineers who are highly skilled, deeply committed, and consistently deliver quality work.

In 2018, I made a prediction that raised a few eyebrows: remote work was about to become the standard. Not a perk. Not a pandemic stopgap. The standard.

My argument was simple. If a developer in Belgrade can score 97% on the same test your London-based candidate scored 72% on, why are you limiting yourself by postcode? The best talent isn't always sitting in your time zone. It's sitting wherever the education system, the culture, and the work ethic have aligned to produce it.

Two years later, COVID proved the point for me. Every company on earth scrambled to figure out what I'd already built my business around.

It's not a skills shortage. It's a search radius problem.

For the past decade, Simpatico has operated exclusively in South Africa. We've built a track record, we've placed exceptional developers, and we've proven the model works.

Now I'm bringing it to the UK, Europe, and the USA.

The need hasn't changed. Companies still struggle to find developers with the right combination of technical depth, communication skills, and reliability. The geography problem hasn't gone away - it's just been rebranded as a "skills shortage."

If your company is spending months trying to fill developer roles, competing with every other company in your city for the same candidates, I'd love to have a conversation.

"The best talent isn't always sitting in your time zone. It's sitting wherever the education system, the culture, and the work ethic have aligned to produce it."

The talent exists. You just haven't looked in the right place yet.

Gail Weiner is the founder of Simpatico Recruitment, connecting companies with exceptional tech talent from Serbia and Eastern Europe. After 20+ years in tech and a decade specialising in cross-border developer placement, she's now expanding Simpatico's services to the UK, European, and US markets.

Get in touch to learn more.