Becoming BWT Alpine Formula One Team's longstanding, top performing PSL partner
Alpine are a Formula 1 team within the Renault Group’s Alpine brand, focused on high-performance engineering, car manufacturing and competing at the pinnacle of motorsport. Matchtech have partnered with Alpine since 2010, delivering their temporary and permanent requirements across the UK.
Alpine's situation
To maintain their competitive edge on and off the track, Alpine required a trusted partner with a network of niche talent across a broad range of engineering skillsets who are able to deliver the best talent consistently, with minimal time-to-hire in a compliant and efficient way. Alpine’s STEM requirements have included:
Mechanical/Composite Design Engineers
CNC Contractors
Store/Parts/Logistics
Quality Inspector
Composite Trimmers
Aerodynamic Engineers
Electronic Design Engineers
Simulation Engineers
Modelling Engineers
Alpine's challenges
As Alpine and Matchtech already have an established partnership in place spanning over a decade, Alpine had confidence in Matchtech's resources, experience and extensive networks to deliver their staffing needs while addressing the following challenges:
How we helped
With over 40 years’ experience as a global STEM recruitment specialist, Matchtech brought the expertise required to address Alpine’s challenges. Since beginning our partnership in 2010, we focused on building a relationship founded on trust and stability. This approach allowed us to gain their confidence over time, leading to an increase in vacancies entrusted to us. Regular visits to Alpine further strengthened our collaboration and understanding of their needs.
To ensure personalised support, we appointed a dedicated Account Manager and conducted regular site visits to enhance collaboration and better understand the demands of the business. By implementing weekly resource meetings, we ensured real-time actions and a highly responsive service - critical to the dynamic nature of the F1 sector. Together, we implemented a comprehensive strategy to address the demands of their crucial 'winter build' season. This strategy not only supported their seasonal workforce requirements but has also fostered a true partnership. We now consult and collaborate with multiple business functions to enhance the recruitment process, providing workforce stability, and streamlined communication for long-term success.
Here’s how we achieved this:
Appointed a dedicated account manager: With over 20 years’ experience in the automotive industry, Matt has established himself as a leading motorsport specialist recruiter with an extensive talent network. By delivering 30+ temporary and permanent professionals and leveraging a high-touch interaction model, including fortnightly catch-ups, we gained deeper insight into client needs. This close collaboration, combined with Matt's expertise, enabled faster and more precise candidate matches.
Established stability & regular communication with hiring managers: We became a trusted extension of Alpine's recruitment function, going beyond the typical agency approach to effectively alleviate hiring pressures by directly supporting and engaging hiring managers. We streamlined communication and implemented weekly meetings with key stakeholders to ensure consistent communication, regular tracking of hiring needs and transparency throughout the recruitment process. This direct engagement not only strengthened relationships with hiring managers but also allowed us to quickly address requirements, provide timely support, and ensure seamless recruitment operations.
On-site candidate engagement & relationship building: We visited Alpine multiple times in the first few months, holding contractor clinics to address any concerns and personally introducing ourselves to senior stakeholders, strengthening relationships and fostering trust. Given hiring managers’ historic disengagement with Alpine’s recruitment process, this was an integral part of building their trust and buy-in to the process.
Built a bespoke Alpine Racing talent pool: To support Alpine’s high-demand 'winter build' season, we created a tailored talent pool, proactively shortlisting active candidates by tapping into our robust database of over 1.2 million pre-screened candidates, AI-driven tools, and strategic attraction methods. This ensured Alpine had access to specialised, ready-to-go talent during peaks in demand, alleviating their challenge of limited access to talent.
Seasonal contractor management & process efficiency: We implemented structured onboarding and offboarding processes aligned with F1’s summer and winter shutdown periods, allowing for seamless contractor transitions during these key times.
Delivered a compliant process, always: After identifying a compliance risk within their supply chain, Alpine entrusted Matchtech to engage and transfer workers, leveraging our dedicated contractor onboarding team, compliance process, and audited umbrella supplier partners. In June 2024, we seamlessly transitioned eight contractors from one of Alpine’s former recruitment partners, addressing concerns regarding the previous agency’s non-compliance. By ensuring ethical practices with SafeRec-approved providers, we stabilised the situation, strengthened our credibility, and deepened our partnership with Alpine
The success of any great partnership lies in the foundation of strong relationships, transparent and regular communication, and a shared commitment to growth. By investing in these areas, we’ve been able to tailor our services and approach to meet the evolving needs of the business and its individual stakeholders. Through close collaboration with all teams and a steadfast focus on delivering top-tier talent promptly and consistently, we’ve built a partnership that thrives on trust and results.
The results
Through delivering a high-touch, responsive service comprising regular communication (on and offsite) with hiring managers and contractors, our integration into Alpine’s internal systems and our market leading access to motorsport talent, we significantly improved Alpine’s processes and results. Not only this but we improved hiring manager and contractor experience and have become an invaluable PSL partner.
Below are key metrics that demonstrate the success of our support to Alpine Racing:
permanent & contract placements since 2010
contractors placed within the last 12 months
live contractors
Exceptional client feedback
Find out more about our wider sector, skill and service provision on our company website here.