Natalya Kasperskaya is general director of Kaspersky Lab, a renowned developer of anti-virus software. She spoke with The Leader about her career and human resources policies at Kaspersky Lab.

Tell us first about your career.

I graduated from the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering in 1989 with a diploma in engineering. But I only worked as an engineer for six months, after which I didn’t work for a couple of years. When I returned to work, I became a sales person at a computer store run by a firm called KAMI. After a while KAMI’s president of the time suggested that I start selling anti-virus software developed by the company. At that time, KAMI had a small anti-virus department, in which three programmers worked, and I began to promote the software they designed, basically being a project manager. In 1997, KAMI entered a period of turmoil, and the company split into several independent units. The anti-virus department was turned into a separate firm, which we named Kaspersky Lab. I became the general director of the new company.

While being trained as an engineer, did you ever consider a career in business?

At that time I didn’t because that wasn’t possible. When it became possible, I was raising children and couldn’t do it. Basically, I went into business out of necessity. I didn’t have any clear-cut plans about that. My husband was designing software, and I also wanted to earn money for the family. And in 1997, we had no one else to head the company. We had tried to find someone to fill that position, but we simply couldn’t get the right person for the money we were offering. Therefore, I had to become general director.

At that time, did you have any relevant experience?

No, I started from scratch. I didn’t even know about computers because those computers I was taught to use at the institute had become obsolete. So, I had to learn everything.
And what about business education?
I just graduated from Britain’s Open University. In fact, I entered it after a few years of being in business. At some point I realized that I didn’t have enough skills.
I got quite a lot from the university, but, still, management is not a science, that’s something more intuitive. It’s good to learn theory, but the British education is too methodical. They teach you 20 business concepts, some of which are useful and some could be complete rubbish.

What was the most difficult stage in your business career?

Starting our own company. I made a few unsuccessful attempts while still working for KAMI. I didn’t like how distribution was organized at KAMI and I tried to organized distribution companies that would sell our anti-virus software, to have our own cash flow and some independence form KAMI. I learned a lot from the failure of those companies. For example, I learned how important finances are and also I understood the importance of a brand. But it was very difficult to suddenly start operation by ourselves, without any backing from the parent company. We had set hopes on a big project, but it didn’t work out and we found ourselves in a very bad financial situation. I can’t even remember now how we survived. Our struggle for survival lasted for three months.

Was it you who came up with the idea of the Kaspersky brand?

Yes. And Kaspersky himself was initially against it because he thought it would be kind of immodest. But the name was already famous in the industry, and we went for it.

From your experience, in what way is the work of a manager at an IT company different from any other company?

Of course, I don’t have my own experience in other sectors, but judging by the information I have, there is a lot in common. The way business works and the way it is managed are the same. What’s different is that we work with creative people. Programmers are normally people of high intellect, they know what they want and it is very hard to make them move in the right direction and perform on a regular schedule, which is necessary to have regular updates of our software. In this way, our business is similar to that of design bureaus, for example. Also, it is sometimes hard to evaluate, how much effort a programming job would take.

What’s your company’s staffing policies? Where do you take your personnel from?

As for programmers and other technical staff, we normally hire people by recommendation or by ads placed on our Website. People are given a trial assignment that they are supposed to complete within a set period. Some our employees bring in other people they can recommend. Also, we recently launched a project for students of several Moscow universities. We have sort of an "incubator" where they work under supervision of experienced software developers on simple tasks. If someone proves to be talented, we hire that person. We’ve already hired four people this way.

Are there many candidates to take part in this program?

When we first announced it early last year, about 50 people applied, but we could take only eight due to space limitations. We’re planning to expand, in fact. But it’s not only the problem of space, we also need supervisors, and this means that our best people are distracted from their main activities, which also costs us money. But it’s good to have this personnel source anyway.

Are there enough software specialists in the market? Some say that the industry can face a shortage of programmers if it develops fast enough.

I can’t share this opinion. There are many talented young people in the sector who are eager to learn and be able to get a better job. And the quality of university education is still high enough. The only problem is that universities don’t train project managers for the IT industry. I am aware of only one department at some university that announced it would train project managers, but no one has seen its graduates to be able to say how good they are. Russian universities do provide a very good training in mathematics, which is a sufficient basis on which a company could train a good programmer. But state Russian universities cannot train project managers because they don’t know how to do it, and their professors don’t have relevant experience. There are some courses on that offered by private universities but I don’t trust the quality of education there.

What are particular qualities that IT project managers should possess?

They should have knowledge in both technology and management. And it is hard to find people like that. Generally, it has been much more difficult for us to find managers than technical staff. We are normally able to find adequate personnel even for the most difficult programming tasks. But as for project managers or top managers, it’s been really difficult. We receive a lot of applications but we can’t really choose anyone. Sometimes, I can pick no one from what recruitment companies offer.

What qualities do those people lack?

They lack professional knowledge and relevant experience. Often, they overrate their own professional level. Since our company is now competing in international markets, we need managers as goods as their Western colleagues. But there, they have many years of experience and a host of educational institutions that train managers, a lot of success stories to learn from– while we have none of that. Even business itself in this country often works through friendly connections, which is absolutely unacceptable. At the same time, people who come to us from Western companies lack initiative because they are used to working under strict supervision. In our company, managers have many responsibilities and once given a goal they have to find the most efficient way to achieve it by themselves.

Have you recently recruited more people as top managers from Russian or Western companies?

From Western companies.

Do you consider regions, or are you focused on the Moscow labor market?

In fact, I prefer people from the regions. They are more active then Muscovites. For example, we have several people from Vladivostok, and they are much more enthusiastic that their Moscow colleagues. Probably, it takes more effort to move to the capital from the province.

How many employees do you have at the moment?

180 people, of which about 80 are technical personnel.

What main incentive does your company provide for its potential employees?

First, our company is famous in the market, and people want to work for a famous company. Then, people get an opportunity to create something new. Quite often, our initial money offering is not as good as that at other companies. But people join us because the work is interesting. Not many Russian companies have ambitious plans of conquering international markets. Also, we offer good money deals. While our initial offerings are about average in the market, salaries at our company grow faster than the sector average.