Discovering and developing young talent is at the heart of Williams F1 comeback plan

Williams is on a “mission” to return to the top of Formula 1 – and at the very heart of that assignment lies the team’s early careers programmes.

Whether it is a graduate programme, an industrial placement, apprenticeships or work experience, the platform to launch a career into F1 with the team based in Grove has never been more accessible.

Add to that a scheme such as the Komatsu-Williams Engineering Academy and the opportunities continue to grow.

Williams can boast nine constructors’ titles and seven drivers’ championships in its storied history, but recent years have seen a drop-off in results and performance.

Now the team is setting about changing its fortunes moving forward and ensuring it can capture some of the most precocious talent available is a key element of the long-term plan.

“We’re on a mission to return to winning championships,” says Williams chief HR officer Ann Perrins.

“The team is growing overall, and talent matters everywhere. When I joined in June last year, we were about 750 people in the team. Now it’s over 1,000.

“Williams has always invested in early careers, and I think one of the most important ways to recognise that, is that actually across all of our early careers’ programmes, it’s more than 10% of our headcount.

Williams has expanded in recent years as it bids to rediscover its glory years

Photo by: Williams

“So it’s pretty significant, and we continue to invest more and more, so it covers lots of different types of role, whether it’s industrial placements for a year, graduate scheme, internships, apprentices.

“There’s different ways that you can come into the organisation from an early careers’ perspective, and we are really serious about how this is going to grow our talent for the future.

“It’s extremely authentic, this belief in future talent, and we really want those people to stay with us on the journey. It’s a genuine investment, even from school age and we don’t want to lose them to other teams.”

Recently, the team received over 20,000 applications for just 80 roles, proof of how desirable jobs in the motorsport industry have become.

That number, though, should not be off-putting to anyone tempted to apply, explains Sasha Prince, Head of Talent & Leadership at Williams.

“Firstly, yes, it is competitive, you do need a certain degree, particularly for certain fields within Formula 1 if you’re going into engineering – that’s unavoidable,” she says.

“But actually, not all 20,000 applications are the same and having done this for a really long time, you can very quickly see the candidates that have made the effort.

“Get someone to proofread it, because when you have got 20,000 that’s a really easy way to start, right?

“Firstly, do the simple things that sound obvious; take care in your application. We work for an industry which you’ve got so much information your fingertips to use, so do that research.”

Prince says applicants who have gone the extra mile stand out from the crowd

Photo by: Williams

Another key aspect of the programmes is having successful alumni now visibly flourishing in roles within Williams. Both Prince and Perrins have go-to examples that spring to mind.

“I think about somebody like Scott Williams, who is our operations director,” relates Perrins.

“He’s been at Williams for just over 20 years. He joined the graduate scheme quite some time ago, but has had an amazing career and is now in a really senior position.

“Because he’s grown up through Williams, he is hugely respected and obviously knows a huge amount about the organisation. That’s one of our visible success stories. There are lots of people like that, but then people who join more recently as well.”

Prince pinpoints a younger candidate who proves the pathway into the early careers programme can start in unlikely places.

“We have Christina Sullivan, who is a wind tunnel engineer,” she explains.

“She actually applied to us from watching Netflix [the Drive to Survive docu-series] and did an industrial placement because she thought: ‘that looks like a cool industry to come into’ and now she’s a graduate doing exceptionally well.”

The structure in place to bring through so much young talent comes from the very top at Williams, with team principal James Vowles driving the idea.

“We are going to go back to the absolute foundations and make sure that we get people absolutely right,” he said. “That means hiring the brightest and best and training the brightest and best.

Vowles has put his ethos of securing the best talents at Williams into place

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“To give you an idea, we welcomed 110 early careers into the organisation and the organisation is 1,000 people – so 11% or so, in that circumstance, is all early careers.

“If that doesn’t tell you what we’re doing for the future… I mean, that is a 5–10-year programme before it really delivers strength, but that’s where we’re putting our investment.”

That desire shown by Vowles has filtered down throughout Williams since he took the role in 2023.

“What really struck me right from the first conversation is that James fundamentally understands that people and culture will drive performance,” says Perrins.

“Of course, the technology is important, and you’ve got to have the investment, that goes without saying. But he really understands, so it was never a battle to have a place at the table and [have to] fight for early careers or performance management or development.

“It’s been more about ‘how much can you do as quickly as possible to really progress our performance?’ So it’s just been very challenging, because there’s a lot of expectation. But at the same time, we’ve been able to make a lot of progress quite quickly.”

For Prince, the idea of building a team made up of homegrown talent attracted from around the world is something she believes can only help in the future.

“Maybe what has changed in the last year, from my perspective, is we are better now at saying: ‘Okay, the next race is really important, but let’s not make it sacrifice 2027 or 2026’ and actually that relates to all of our strategies, everything we do,” she added.

Perrins says Williams is serious about keeping hold of the talent it develops

Photo by: Autosport

“There’s definitely quick wins and immediate fixes, but ‘actually, don’t let that compromise what we’re here to achieve, which is ultimately winning championships’ and that applies to the early careers programme.

“We’ve done a lot of upgrading initial programmes, how we engage with students. But we have a strategy beyond that, which says how we want to expand and develop the programme in the next two to three years.”

As the developments in early learning programmes progress, it is the hope and vision of Williams that its championship-winning possibilities do so, too.