Alfa Capital

To be honest, I don't remember how long we've been working together. I think at least two years. At some point, we began to have a growing number of open positions, and we started looking for a reliable contractor who could fill our needs. That is when I got in touch with Star Staff.
At first we had several agencies, but I realized that this was of little use. It's better to find a good, reliable partner, establish interaction with it and work in peace.

In this perspective, Maksim [Gusev] and I found common ground, understood that we can always negotiate. That is why I feel comfortable working with Star Staff, and I don't want to look for other agencies. All of our positions are filled by them, and we ourselves don't even have to look for anyone in IT, except for some urgent cases, when it is urgent, right now, otherwise we will die.

We are now starting a new project to automate all our back office systems. Star Staff is looking for a full team.

I have been in recruiting for a long time, I understand the specifics, and for me the most important thing is that the guys at the agency know how to listen to the client. If I, as a client, come and say, "This is not convenient for us, but this is", I want them to hear me and find a way to adjust.

I think he appreciates me for my directness, too. That is why we do not have any misunderstandings or reticence. I am used to open dialogue, I feel comfortable that way.

It's simple enough. Someone from the business comes and says that they are going to expand and they need so many developers, analysts, or testers. I send an application to the recruitment agency and the search begins. At the same time, the business is directly involved in correspondence with the agency, so there is clear feedback, and we solve all issues together.

Usually we recruit because the business is growing, new projects are opening. Or because they cannot cope with the current volume of work and need more people. We have no project committees, we have a simple company, no complicated decision-making processes, no unnecessary bureaucracy. All you have to do is come to us and say you need more people.

We have about 30 people in our IT department. We started growing it in 2018. In terms of technology, we have everything standard for a financial structure. We get people from any bank that has a strong IT component: Raiffeisen, Alfa-Bank, Sberbank, VTB. They all write in the same languages and use the same technologies. In this respect, it's not hard for us to find people, because we are always at the cutting edge: we work on what's popular now.

And we don't care whether the person who comes to us is from a bank or not. The developers at the banks simply own the stack we need. All of the financial groups write in more or less the same way. So if the person is from the top 10 banks, then 99.9% that he will fit our stack. People often come to us from some consulting structure who have written something for banks. I don't remember anyone coming to us from other industries lately.

Of course, we look for people who can fit into our corporate culture. Firstly, we need flexibility, a person to be quick-witted, able to switch from one task to another quickly. Secondly, the ability to communicate. If a developer comes in who is unable to communicate, a closed-minded introvert, he definitely would not suit us. We have a very open communicative atmosphere; someone from the business can come in and ask the development team what is going on. And if a person can't communicate, he simply won't do it.

And it's also very important for us that the developers are a little bit system analysts, or business analysts, who can figure out for themselves what the product is being developed and how to make it better. So we are looking for universal guys.

And, of course, our service checks every employee very carefully, because we work in the financial industry.

We did. We had people coming in at 10 to work remotely, we didn't stop anything. The managers got involved and helped the newcomers to join the process, fit into the team, adapt.

Frankly speaking, there were more problems with the current employees. At first we didn't understand what to do, everyone was a bit shocked. Our company had never worked remotely, and then we had to transfer everyone abruptly. People reacted in different ways, and it wasn't the most pleasant period. The negative background put a lot of pressure on some employees.

Now 60% of the employees have already returned to the office. At first we tried to drive everyone home, and now we are trying to get everyone out of there.

IT people have always asked for remote work, there have always been such requests from candidates. This issue has not been finally resolved in our company yet. The management is discussing this topic, how it will be, and in what format. There are already some positions that will be 100% remote. At the moment we are taking developers who will always be working remotely, mostly juniors.

I hope that we will have some kind of flexible system where you can work remotely or in the office if you want.

I haven't noticed that there are a lot of good guys on the market who are easy to pick up. I think everyone has become more conservative on the contrary, and is afraid to make a move in terms of switching to a new one.