In the near future, the mobile network operator Kyivstar plans to increase the staff of IT and Digital specialists by 38.9%, to 500 people, President of Kyivstar Alexander Komarov told reporters on Wednesday.

"Personnel costs are growing very strongly. And here there are two factors: we certainly want to be competitive in the struggle for talent. We want to retain the best employees. We want to hire new ones. And the second factor: we have a significant share of the growth of personnel – IT and Digital. If today there are about 360 IT and Digital specialists in our staff, then I understand that there will be 500 of them in the near future," he said.

According to Komarov, the IT-specialists market in Ukraine is now significantly "overheated".

"We have HR cost inflation of about 22-24% year-on-year. And this is what influences business in one way or another and builds the result that both Kyivstar and the entire industry get," the president of Kyivstar said.

He also said that the company adheres to the point of view that all strategic projects or platforms should be serviced within the company. In accordance with this strategy, the company returned all field network maintenance, service department, call center to the staff.

"The same concerns Digital development. From my point of view, the IT development team, which sits in the same room with a business customer and interacts quickly, behaves very flexibly. And this is the only way to success in key projects," Komarov said.

Kyivstar is a market-leading telecoms operator in Ukraine. It provides communication and data services based on a wide range of mobile and fixed-line technologies, including 3G. By the end of 2020, its services were used by about 25.9 million mobile subscribers and about 1.1 million fixed Internet customers.

The shareholder of Kyivstar is the international group VEON (earlier – VimpelCom Ltd.). The group's shares are listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange (New York).