Two different approaches to the the economics of hiring and staff retention for an IT company in Russia are presented. 10-year experience of successful collaboration between Saint-Petersburg State University and software company Lanit-Tercom is shown. In the course of this collaboration Lanit-Tercom employees work as tutors with University students, supervising their diploma and other scientific works. The enterprise allocates a relatively big budget for this purpose and nevertheless, if one compares these expenses with traditional HR processes (hiring, retraining, etc), taking into account the average duration of employment of the staff, the described approach is more preferable. In justification of this conclusion, calculations and arguments are presented in the article.