IT HR & tech recruitment agency

We will find tech talents and form a team for years to come!

We recommend only those guys we could work with

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We help companies and candidates
find each other

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

It is difficult to find IT and dev talents based on a referral program. Time goes by and the job is not done...

Interviews are attended by candidates who are definitely not suitable...

Finding a specialist and filling a difficult position on time is not possible…

The expertise of HR tech agency Cellar door helps you find the professionals you will be most comfortable working with.

CELLAR DOOR

Who we recruit

CEO, CTO, project manager, product manager, team leader, head of department

MANAGEMENT

Python, Go, Node.js, Java, Ruby, C++, PHP, C#, Scala, Clojure, Rust, Kotlin etc

BACK-END DEVELOPER

FRONT-END DEVELOPER

MOBILE APP DEVELOPER

SYSTEM, BUSINESS ANALYST

QA ENGINEER

UX/UI, GRAPHIC DESIGNER

DEVOPS, SRE ENGINEER

DATA SCIENTISTS, MACHINE LEARNING & DEEP LEARNING ENGINEERS, DATA ANALYST

Levels ― middle, senior, lead, architect, manager, C-level

GAMEDEV GUYS

producer, game designer, level designer, narrative designer, developers, artists, animators etc

CLOUD ENGINEER

RECRUITER, HR BP, TECH HR, DEVREL MANAGER

AGILE COACH, SCRUM MASTER

PRODUCT SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

E-COMMERCE

CUSTOM SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

DIGITAL

FINTECH

GAMEDEV

Who we recruit for

Where we search

Direct and active search ― boolean search and X-ray, headhunting from competing companies, professional recruitment web services, thematic forums, referrals, and, of course, our networking

We analyze the competitive advantages of the company and vacancy

01.

We source and submit candidates with the right competencies and similar values

02.

We ask at least 50 questions about the company and the job to know exactly who and for what tasks you need to find

04.

We feel the situation and expectations, help employers and candidates find each other

03.

We dive into the specifics
of your business

05.

We surprise!

Hey, it seems you know your stuff and you're asking the right questions

IT guys are always surprised

Everyone who comes from you guys is good for us. How do you do that?

employers are always surprised

Recruiting only IT and tech talents

We practice not a conveyor-based approach, but human communication and joint solving of common tasks with clients — we are partners, not executors

01.

We act technologically, using all possible tools and platforms — familiar environment of tech specialists

02.

We comply with professional ethical standards. We never headhunt our clients' employees

04.

We don't work with CV, we work with a person. We do not ask where they see themselves in 5 years, do not interview in a stress way. We discuss experience, previous projects, desires and motivation

03.

We know who they are and where they are. We speak the same language and objectively assess competences

For us, a person is important, not the resource to fill a position. This approach works 100%.

CELLAR DOOR

I can recruit IT guys worldwide.
I love developers for their desire to create and change the world. And it is always fun to hang out with them.

I have been leading recruiters and hr-managers

12 years

positions have been filled.
1,200 employers and candidates found each other with my help

600+

I have been in recruitment and HRM

15 years

I have been specializing in IT HR and Tech recruitment

11 years

Cellar door starts with its founder...

People are the most valuable asset in companies. We found new employees for you as if we did it for ourselves.

ceo and thought leader
thailand, samui

Ksenia Okuntseva

I made my dream come true and shared my experience with the world - wrote a book "Everything you wanted to know about IT recruiting".
I understand what OOP and SOLID are, algorithms and data structures. I know the difference not only between Java and Javascript, but also between SQL and NoSQL, ML and DL, UX and UI, functional and unit testing.
I always tell my clients that we are in the same boat and working towards the same goal, aren't we?

Here's what we offer

IT, GAMEDEV & TECH recruitment

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We fill any vacancy worldwide if it meets market conditions and it's not detached from reality

We build teams from scratch for start-ups and growing companies

We save you time by eliminating communication with irrelevant candidates

We accurately match people to stated professional competencies

We replace in-house recruiters if your company doesn't have them

RECRUITING TECH HR MANAGERS, RECRUITERS AND HRD

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We help you find «your» person for the company

We professionally evaluate hard skills of candidates

We attract the best people, drawing on Tech HR's recruitment expertise to our own team

We find those who we would hire in our own team :)

Wage surveys

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We help identify the best locations to open new development offices worldwide

We allow to define the exact budget for salaries of tech talents

We help set the salary range in the company

We analyze employers' wages for a given period by specific position

HR-CONSULTING

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We audit recruitment processes

We advise managers on human resources management

We analyse processes, find bottlenecks and opportunities for optimisation

We train managers and HR on sourcing and interviewing tricks

How we work

acquaintance with the company and the vacancy

We find out who, where and under what conditions you would like to hire. We discuss our terms and let you know if we can help. If we can't — we explain why.

As a rule, these are high expectations and combinations of skills that no one can possess.

01.

Approval of a recruitment request. contract signing

We discuss the job profile, dive into the specifics of the business. We get information about the team, tasks, prospects.

Our recruiter helps you to prepare a recruitment request and sends it to you for review and approval.

02.

candidate sourcing

We draft the job description, actively search through our own channels, recruit candidates, assess the background, soft skills and motivation of each candidate.

We choose the most suitable ones, taking into account the tasks and expectations of the company.

03.

SUBMISSION of candidates

We send you a candidate's CV, portfolio, code examples (if needed) and a motivated HR evaluation, detailed comments from the recruiter after an HR interview.

You get your first candidates in a week or two after we start cooperating.

04.

feedback moderation

We organise in-person and online interviews between the candidate and your company representative; supervise test tasks (if you have any).

We collect feedback/impressions from you and the candidate.

05.

JOB OFFER

We pass on your job offer to the final candidate and arrange the first working date.

Congratulations to everyone!

06.

Monitoring the candidate's employment. Payment

You keep us posted that our candidate has started working.

We rejoice, congratulate you again and invoice you for payment.

07.

MONITORING of a TRIAL PERIOD

During the candidate's probationary period and onboarding, we keep our finger on the pulse, asking you and the new employee how things are going.

Statistically, 96 percent of the candidates we recruited are successfully on probation.

08.

There are almost no boundaries for us

We recruit IT and tech staff worldwide for local and international companies to work remotely, onsite or with a relocation to anywhere

Ksenia and her team were quick to understand and adapt to the hiring needs of our remote-first gaming startup. They helped us find excellent matches for multiple roles in our team. Candidates suggested by Cellar Door were always well vetted and highly competent.
Working with this team of recruiters was a pleasure and we'll gladly pick Cellar Door again for any future hiring needs.
Nikolaj Nyholm
CEO, Scattershot
Together with Cellar Door, we were looking for guys for a very difficult position — Clojure Engineer. Fullstack developers with such a stack are a rarity. An additional difficulty was that we needed to hire middle and higher-level specialists. But this didn't scare colleagues :) Several positions were successfully closed.

The result is pretty good, but the hiring process is no less important. A recruitment brief was well-researched and well-formed. We got detailed and informative summaries of the candidates. Comments about soft skills hit the mark and helped us in the future.

My special thanks to Anna Sumina for working together — comfortable, easy and productive :)
Thanks to the whole Cellar Door team, you are awesome! I wish you great results :)
Nataliya Surovtseva
HR Business Partner, Health Samurai
Hi there.
My name is Sasha and I am the Head of Recruitment in a pretty big American outsourcing company.
A year ago, when there was a hopeless situation, we were forced to contact the agency to search for a few developers. I turned to the first agency, because everyone knew about it. Cellar Door was found by googling a bit.

And here we go!

For 3 months Ksusha has recruited such cool specialists for us, from whom our client simply squeaked and asked to transfer them to America immediately. For comparison, the first agency offered us only one developer who did not fit.

I really enjoyed working with Ksusha. The main reason why I recommend her to everyone is that she selects staff "as for herself", tells about all the pitfalls hiding nothing.

It's also nice to just talk with Ksusha. She is super professional and a very nice person ❤️❤️
Alexandra Zakoryukina
Head of Recruitment, Akvelon
Very friendly recruiters. They try doing their best to quickly adapt to our company's needs.

Guys have a large database of engineers with high potential and experience.
I like comments about each candidate on those skills and soft skills after a personal interview with Cellar door.
Alvina Maslova
People Operations Manager, Cube Dev
The signing of the contract took more than a month due to the agreement on key points. Work started only after the signing. There is a wish to finalize this item so that it does not slow down the work as a whole.
A briefing is a competent, clear, transparent process. In the process of working with candidates (interviews) guys heard feedback and adjusted the profile of candidates to the requirements, taking into account the soft skills and corporate culture of the company.
Time to hire — exceeded our expectations, but did not exceed the standard terms allowed within our company, namely 60 days.
Compliance of the candidate with the company cultural code is a complete hit. Out of 3 candidates: 1st = 20% / 2nd = 50% / 3rd = 100%.
Compliance of the candidate with professional competencies is a complete hit.
Leila Hadzhyieva
Chief Human Resource Officer, Affise
Cellar Door is a 100% individual approach to each recruitment application!

We have repeatedly turned to the guys for help in filling developer vacancies. Everything is always clear and to the point. We are very satisfied with the approach and deadlines for closing vacancies.
Definitely, this team is IT recruitment professionals!

Ksenia, guys, thank you for the cool work and affordable cost of services! :)
Tatiana Sukhovaya
Human Resource Manager, RosFines
I can confidently recommend Ksenia as a serious, reliable and effective partner for the search for IT specialists of different levels and with different inputs.

She will help not only to find a number of candidates, but will study the niche, help with the salary statistics in the required segment, investigate the issues of improving the funnel during the search, give detailed and to the point comments and accompany the whole process better than expected. At the end we get a great result within the given timeframe.
Anatoly Zhupanov
CIO, Reinvent
My start-up project needed to find someone in the US who knew how to sell IT solutions to farmers.

The task was not a standard one, but was nevertheless completed in a few days. I was surprised that Ksenia was able to calculate my requirements very accurately and provided 100% suitable candidates in just one short conversation.
Alexander Karabasov
Project manager, foreign markets, SKB Kontur
I had been working with Ksenia at SKB Kontur for more than three years. I was the main customer of her HR department — we searched for, retained and, in some cases, nurtured IT specialists.

It should be noted that with Ksenia's arrival the recruitment work has changed qualitatively for the better — we began to meet the expectations of the company in this matter. In working together, I especially appreciated Ksenia's desire not just to fill a vacancy, but to make the former candidate and his or her new manager enjoy the professionalism of their team work. This was made possible by the delicate work of selecting the right people for the company, the task and the specific team.

Over time, due to Ksenia's efforts, we developed a new institution of HR business partnership. It became much easier to keep abreast of the situation and react to difficult situations in the team, burnouts and other symptoms of problems.
Igor Ustyuzhanin
International Project Manager, SKB Kontur
The most important thing about working with Ksenia is trust. There has never been much worry about the outcome when we started doing tasks or projects of any scale together in one way or another.

Partner. Ksyusha is not just someone who you set a problem to, but you tell her what your problem is, and she comes up with a way of solving it herself.

A breadth of vision. Ksyusha usually offers not only a solution to a local problem that may recur, but a strategic change that will allow you to work at a new level in the future.

Thanks for the years of working together!
Denis Onishchenko
Product Manager, SKB Kontur
I worked with Ksusha at SKB Kontur for several years. Ksusha made IT recruitment at Kontur strong and systematic.

She was not only good at her job, but also helped me and other colleagues build HR processes.

I recommend her!
Ivan Ilyin
Executive Director of apiqa.io
Ksusha is the best IT-HR I know.

The coolest thing about working with her is that you don't have to double-check a candidate's competencies and profile. If Ksusha says that the candidate is perfect for you, then that is the case :)
Klavdiya Potapova
Development Manager, SKB Kontur
With love to people, with a heart for the cause.
Alexei Khvorost
Development Manager, SKB Kontur
I worked with Ksenia at SKB Kontur from 2014 to 2018. It was a memorable time of rapid and massive quantitative growth of my unit.

It was an ambitious task to recruit a large number of people in 4 cities and not to lose quality from so many new people. Around the same time a new recruitment unit appeared in the company, headed by Ksenia. We were lucky. Ksenia and I quickly found common ground on many issues: who to look for, how to look for, where to look for ... new people. Working with Ksenia, we liked her informal approach.

We always focused on another new problem, how to solve some issue as efficiently as possible.

Formalism was kept to a minimum, so that the artifacts of the activity remained. And I also liked that Ksenia tried to maintain an informal relationship between HR and the production units. We have been missing that a lot since she left the company. I am glad Ksenia has her own agency, it means we will continue to cooperate.
Andrei Sokolov
Head of Infrastructure Development, SKB Kontur

Ksenia had a really gentle and kind approach with me, as a recruiter who cared about her role, she first read carefully my CV before contacting me and showing opportunities that were available for my role.
In total honesty, I really believe that she comes in time I started feeling to look around for new opportunities, more over on a technical side. And here we are, after some meetings with her as well as with the company (I'm working with), in a week I was ready to move forward with them! I appreciated a lot her care after interviews and afterwards, she kept in touch with me to see if everything was going well as she prospected!
Thanks a lot!
Simone Federico Tomasello
Senior Technical Animator
There was a period when recruiters were attacking me. Communicating with them, as well as interviews, was a normal daily routine.

But in dealing with Anna, I would single out two very different pluses: efficiency and honesty.
She was always ready to answer my questions honestly, warned me about possible problems in communicating with some individuals, about the specifics of the place of work, the company, and in general did not splurge just to close the vacancy. But at the same time, the communication was extremely positive and flowed by itself, naturally.

Thanks to this, it was much easier to make a difficult decision to change a job.
And after half a year I can confidently say that the decision was right in every sense of the word.
Vitaly Zaslavsky
DevOps engineer
For more than six months I have been working on an interesting project which Anna helped me find.

I would like to express my special thanks to her. When I started communicating with Anna, I was cooperating with another recruiter, and both projects were quite interesting for me. Therefore, in that situation, everything was decided by the speed with which Anna interacted with a potential employer and me.
I received regular feedback and it helped me make the right decisions and plan for the future.
Mikhail Makarov
DevOps engineer
Thank you very much, wonderful IT HR agency Cellar door!

They found me on the Internet, offered a great vacancy, promptly organized negotiations, helped resolve related problems and answered all questions.
The highest professionalism. Positive and pleasant communication. Love at first email! =)

Totally recommend!
Alex Firsov
Node.js developer
I would like to thank you again for your help in finding a new team for me, which I am sure I will be able to help.
In this case, in my opinion, the task was pretty unconventional, definitely different from recruiting a developer, QA or DevOps for example: an IT-manager with a large baggage of various experience, which was obtained in just one company and immediately for a top position, which definitely raises the stakes and inflates the price of a mistake.

I hadn't had an interview for eight years by that moment.
There was one meeting (an hour-long conversation), after which I received comprehensive feedback from Ksenia. Then there were two meetings with business owners and a good job offer, which I accepted. At all stages I received support and saw an interest in the successful completion of the recruitment, I felt involved. It was a great experience, thank you!
Yuri Tolpygo
CTO
Ksenia is a guide to the world of bombastic and unique jobs.

We have collaborated together several times and I have always felt the magic and synergy. It's wonderful when a recruiter isn't just trying to fill a client's vacancy, but to bring people together who are perfect for each other.
Oleg Mazur
Product owner
Ksenia is a rare professional in her field.

1. Organisation of interactions.
It includes correspondence, calls and communication in Tlgm. Her emails are as informative as possible and always include the right references and the most necessary information. Ksenia is always in touch, which I like very much :) Everything happens promptly and to the point.

2. Conducting the interview.
It was the most powerful HR interview I had ever had — I have a lot to compare it to. Before that I was interviewed in different companies and it was in a very light mode, very superficial, just a biographical interview, I even did not strain). By HOW you are interviewed you can immediately see the level of a company. It took Ksenia half an hour to probe systematically all the competencies, there were cases, projective questions and methodology STAR. My palms were really sweating! I felt that I was a real pro. In addition Ksenia spoke in detail about the position and the company (it was an interesting dialogue), highlighted the risks and gave feedback. For me, this is a model of how to communicate with candidates. After this interview I think she had no questions about my professional experience and had a good idea of all the pros and cons of me as a candidate.

3. Communication style.
Ksenia was easy to talk to, we quickly became on a first-name basis. It was more comfortable for her and for me. I could always address any of my questions to her and get a detailed and prompt answer. We were partners and we came to a Win-Win solution together. She took over the communications with the Customer, my future employer, and handled all the issues personally.
Anna Necheukhina
HR-generalist

I worked very closely with Ksusha at SKB Kontur: before she was an unsophisticated head of HR, then she joined our company as a recruiter and, in a few years, she became the coolest IT HR in Ekaterinburg.

What helped her achieve this result? (Except me) First of all, the ability to absorb new information quickly, to work her ass out for 14 hours a day, and also empathy and compassion for customers, who are «all cool dudes, how can you let them down». If you have a lot of internal problems, you had better not hire her, or she'll start nagging you to solve them.
Alexey Zverev
Project Manager, SKB Kontur
Ksusha came to Kontur as a rank-and-file HR person after leaving UBRD (The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development) in 2014. As someone from the programming world (although I was not working as a programmer at the time), I consulted her to help communicate better with developers, to immerse herself in the subject.

Often people without a technical background cannot find common ground with developers due to the fact that they generally do not lead the discussion logically enough (in the understanding of the technical mind). Ksyusha did not have such a problem; she found common ground easily at once.

Even though she had no technical background, she was good at grasping. After a couple of months, she could talk (at HR's level) about algorithms, languages, technology stacks. It's great when HR can speak the same language as developers. She became the head of all the IT HR people in Kontur pretty quickly.
Mikhail Rubinchik
Head Coach of Ural Federal University in Sports Programming
I worked in Ksenia's team for over a year. And that time was one of the coolest times in pumping up all the skills, both professional and personal.

The values of the company and the team in which I work, the values of my manager, have always been important to me. Ksusha has created an atmosphere in our team that is an amazing combination of trust, responsibility and high performance. With Ksusha it is impossible not to strive for high results, because she is the result. I saw her personal results every day: the trust of clients and colleagues; confidence that she is up to any task she undertakes, recognition as an expert in many HR matters.

I am convinced that for everyone who has ever come across Ksusha in her professional network, her name sounds like a guarantee of a good result, trusting partnership, and simply comfortable work process.
Olga Tolchenova
IT HR, SKB Kontur
I worked with Ksenia at Kontur: I took part in her workshops and listened to her reports at conferences. She conducted an exit-interview with me and we have kept in touch since I left the company.

I remember her as a sincere person who is happy to help, listen and advise.

I benefited greatly from her masterclass on interviewing. I learned the difference between good and bad questions and now I am building a dialogue so that I can hear the truth in response, rather than socially acceptable answers.
Nikolay Baraboshkin
Teamlead, GC FIX
Ksusha helps you solve your problems. And it seems that their complexity or incomprehensibility does not scare her, but only inspires her. She is like a psychotherapist who you can talk with about everything related to work.
Evgeniy Molokov
Front-end developer, Fastdev
Kusha professes a mega-service approach to working with clients: she thoroughly clarifies their needs in order to give them exactly the result they need, builds relationships of trust and creates a comfortable atmosphere.

I think that is why customers are attracted to Ksusha :)
Nadezhda Lystseva
Head of HR-analytics and business processes, SKB Kontur

Are you ready to talk?

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Submit your CV

Terms and conditions

From 15% of the candidate's annual gross salary

Payment once the candidate is employed by your company

Free replacement — for 3 months

TECH Recruitment Services

To assess your employees

To understand where to open a new development office

130$ — 1 position/1 city

260$ — 1 position/1 country
(or multiple locations in the one report)

WAGE SURVEYS

Before starting recruitment process — free of charge

Training, coaching, auditing of Tech HR processes — individually

HR COUNSELLING

We scan the market and find the best candidates for you — as if we did it for ourselves!

CELLAR DOOR

Let's work together

You will definitely get rid of the headache of looking for tech specialists with us.

E-MAIL:

hello@cellardoor.team

TELEGRAM:

@cellardoor_ithr

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