AI Is Changing Hiring, but Judgment and Experience Still Matter Most

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Let's bring Marlee back into the conversation, turn our attention to Hiring Trends on Wall Street. We are joined by Audrey Symes, Partner and Head of Research at M Research. Thank you so much, Audrey, for your time, and Happy Friday, we got there.

**Audrey Symes** (0:12)
Happy Friday, we sure did.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:14)
And it's interesting, you've been sort of crunching the numbers here on Wall Street. Just talk us through what sort of hiring trends you are seeing, because it's obviously summer intern season, we see a lot of them around. Yes, yes. Just talk us through what you're seeing.

**Audrey Symes** (0:26)
Well, I mean, I think what's interesting is that, as you just said, the economy has had a bit of a candy-stripe picture recently. It's hard to know where we stand, right? Last month, we obviously got a surprise jobs reading that was much weaker than we had hoped. But within the 23,000 jobs that we added, I think it was really interesting and it says a lot that 10,000 were in financial services. So what we're seeing at Jackson Lucas and at M Research, where we support all of Jackson Lucas' retained executive searches, is that the K-shaped economy that we've heard so much about is truer than ever. We really see, you know, especially because AI can accentuate those more senior financial roles, and that judgment and intuition and perspective is just more in demand than ever. So we see across a variety of different financial services platforms, we see really strong demand for really skilled people, and also weaker demand for kind of the average person, especially in banking. We just released a white paper talking about how the VP level of bankers right now, which would be like kind of the COVID era cohort, because of a lack of mentorship for obvious reasons.
The cream of the crop really separated themselves pretty profoundly from the average person, and then PE has picked off a lot of the rest. So right now, some VPs are commanding 50% more than they would have a couple of years ago, and getting those offers. I think the surge in M&A has a lot to do with that, which should continue since, you know, the Fed is probably going to hold next month.
So we think that's really interesting. Private wealth, which is skyrocket, also, you know, because of that K shape. And you mentioned a bunch of different indicators. I think Walmart, the sales yesterday, was another really interesting one, showing that some of that consumer appetite has segmented. But, you know, with private wealth, we've seen it's interesting because so many RAAs are starting to retire. But that field is more in demand than ever. And what we're seeing is, you know, the platforms from family offices to wire house across the board, they really want people who not just are producers and have a book, but also are building up the enterprise and really fully taking advantage of those opportunities and they're paying up for that and incentivizing for enterprise building. So that's another place M Research in our AI framework really sees a very augmentative role for AI. And then finally in Secondaries, which is so hot right now because everybody loves a performing asset.
We really see that that platform has scaled something like 50 percent in the past year. It's like 200 something billion dollars. So across different Secondaries shops, we're seeing a huge appetite for hiring, but people need to keep in mind that different dispositions of firms need different types of people. There's relationship orientation, execution orientation, disposition, sourcing. All of those firms really need to know what they're looking for, and especially people who have the right subject matter expertise to really identify the best Secondaries opportunities and not just rise with the tide and fall with the tide.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:54)
And Audrey, you've got Marlee here. We spoke with Lisa Flicker from Jackson Lucas the day the jobs report came out, and her whole point was that essentially because the data is old by the time we get it, the headline number wasn't actually reflective of anything they were seeing at Jackson Lucas, and you're sort of echoing that same sentiment. How would you rate the health of Wall Street hiring, knowing that we're coming off of this pretty significant headline miss?

**Audrey Symes** (4:22)
I mean, I think Wall Street and the economy are often conflated and as we know, they're not the same thing. You can look just this year. I mean, the S&P has posted double digit returns despite a very up and down, shaky economy and a war. So I think that, as I said, M&A has a lot of room to run.