Every two months, the Race Against Dementia Researcher Training Programme includes virtual training sessions that guide our researchers to implement the Formula 1 mindset.
April’s training session focused on how to build a winning team by sharpening their ability to identify talent when looking for new team members.
Like Formula 1, Dementia Research is a team sport.
A measure of progress for early career researchers is recruiting talent and becoming leaders of elite research teams.
Recruiting talent within dementia research and Formula 1 is extremely competitive.
Emma Yates and Megan Sampson from Formula 1 team Alpine shared their expertise on how they identify talent suitable for the pinnacle of motorsport from initial application, including specifics on CVs and interviews, to retaining the talent that drives success.
“The parallels between elite motorsports and dementia research are vast”
Megan and Emma are HR business partners for the Alpine F1 Team, focussed on recruitment, development and retention of highly skilled individuals.
Talking about their session they said:
“The parallels between elite motorsports and dementia research are vast. Both rely on ambitious and talented people working together, getting the car further up the grid and research closer to cures for Dementia.”
“It was great speaking to Race Against Dementia researchers today about how they can build their own elite teams.”
One of the Race Against Dementia Fellows, Dr Claire Durrant, is in the penultimate year of her Fellowship and has vast experience of recruitment for her team.
During the training session, Claire shared her strategies and challenges in recruiting top talent.
This included the ‘homework’ task she sets for candidates to assess their suitability for the role and a unique three-factored approach measuring candidates on key attributes: motivation, skillsets and the ability to be a cohesive member of the team. Armed with this new knowledge about recruiting and retaining highly skilled individuals for their research teams, our Fellows can continue to build resilient and disciplined teams, driving their research forward.
