The paper presents the results of a comparative study of human resource management peculiarities in two groups of knowledge-intensive firms: those working in IT field and in advertising/PR field. 100 Russian medium size enterprises were the object of research. The questionnaire made on the basis of the European quality standard "Investors in People" was the research tool. The differences in HR practices aimed at personnel development and relevant to various human resource strategies have been proven to a statistically-valid degree. IT companies tend to realize the high performance strategy, whereas advertising and PR companies prefer the high involvement strategy.