AI TALENT PULSE REPORT · FINANCIAL SERVICES
The AI Fluency Gap
Everyone Wants AI Fluency. No One Agrees What It Is.
Over the past year, AI deployment has been a top priority for financial services leaders, who face mounting pressure to prove these technologies deliver real returns. Many firms turned to a familiar playbook: hire top talent to lead the charge.
Gathered through Censuswide, an accredited third-party market research platform, this new data from Selby Jennings suggests that playbook is harder to execute than it sounds. Polling 500 HR professionals in the finance industry, the research finds that the very people responsible for hiring struggle to identify what talent they actually need. And once they do, they have difficulty finding candidates who are actually qualified.
That's not a failure of effort. It's a symptom of how fast the underlying skills are shifting, and how much competition there is for the people who actually have them. AI fluency has become the industry's most urgent hiring priority, and its least defined one.
“For decades, leaders on Wall Street wanted talent with specific backgrounds, degrees, and experience, creating an almost formulaic process for vetting and hiring candidates. AI has broken that framework, and most firms haven't built a new one yet."
Ben Hodzic, Managing Director, Selby Jennings
Included within this research:
AI fluency is finance's top hiring priority, and its least defined. We track where that gap shows up, from the job spec to the performance review.
PART ONE: The Big Picture
PART TWO: What firms hire for
PART THREE: HOW FIRMS ASSESS IT
PART FOUR: HOW FIRMS MEASURE IT
PART ONE
Wall Street's AI Hiring Boom Is Built on a Blind Spot
Firms are hiring faster and spending more than ever on AI talent without a reliable way to evaluate it, and most can't tell who's actually qualified.
don't know what “AI-enabled” means for the roles they're hiring for
keep hiring the wrong profile
can't find anyone internally who has actually done the work they're hiring for
say the #1 roadblock to hiring AI-enabled talent is that no one internally can confidently evaluate candidates
say the share of underqualified candidates they're interviewing has increased over the past year
Yet hiring has never moved faster
growth in hiring for AI-enabled roles over the past year
increase in total hiring spend on this talent
increase in speed to fill AI-specific roles
increase in offer acceptance rates
Some of that speed comes from new tactics:
of HR professionals in finance now rely more heavily on AI tools to screen candidates
have increased filling roles internally through reskilling or lateral moves
say HR or legal simply can't move fast enough to close offers before candidates walk, adding further pressure to compress an already-strained process
“Wall Street didn’t solve its AI evaluation gap. It's just built a faster process to hire around it.”
Ben Hodzic, Managing Director, Selby Jennings
PART TWO
Is AI Fluency the New Ivy League?
The push to build AI-savvy teams has changed the industry’s longstanding framework for what qualified talent looks like. Ivy League pedigree is out. AI fluency is in. Below shows the % of finance HR Professionals citing which factor will carry the most weight when evaluating candidates in their organization’s next hiring cycle
Is AI Fluency the New Ivy League?
AI has had such an influence on the market that even foundational skills now rank lower than AI fluency. But pure human talent isn't out the door: 27% of respondents still rank passing interview assessments without AI as a highly sought-after qualification.
For jobseekers, this means landing a role on Wall Street will take both – the AI fluency firms are hiring for, and the raw judgment they’re not willing to give up.
PART THREE
Candidates Are Using AI to Game AI Hiring. Can HR Keep Up?
From tools that suggest answers in real time during video interviews to leaning on AI to complete assessments, candidates are finding new ways to use the technology to help them in the hiring process, even when it’s not permitted. At the same time, resumes claiming AI experience are easy to write and increasingly hard to trust. Financial services firms report a growing gap between what candidates claim and what they can actually do, and it's shifting how they screen from the first round.
say their overall ability to distinguish qualified candidates from those who overstate AI experience has improved over the past year
say their organization has added more technical assessments specifically to weed out bad candidates
say their organization can spot when candidates for AI roles may be overstating their skills or experience
say their organization now uses AI-conducted interviews when hiring for AI roles, a way to verify skills that resumes often overstate
The vetting doesn't stop at qualifications
More than 1 in 4 HR professionals say they can identify when a candidate may be using AI in ways that aren't permitted during the hiring process itself, meaning some candidates are using AI to help them pass the very assessments meant to prove their own skill.
Even with better detection in place, some firms won't gamble on a wrong hire
24% of HR professionals say their organization would rather leave a seat empty than bring on the wrong candidate.
PART FOUR
AI Fluency Is Becoming a Performance Metric
Companies now reward and monitor AI skills long after the hiring process.
AI fluency is now tied to compensation and performance
of HR professionals say their organization has tied raises, promotions, and bonuses to AI proficiency
now require employees to disclose their AI use as part of formal performance reviews
And formal structures are catching up fast
have created new guidelines for assessing employee skill sets around AI
have created entirely new roles or departments dedicated to proving AI ROI
“A year ago, most firms weren't tracking any of this. It's no longer enough to hire for AI fluency once. Firms want ongoing proof that the investment is actually producing results.”
Ben Hodzic, Managing Director, Selby Jennings
CONCLUSION
The Bottom Line
The standard for AI fluency is still taking shape. Here's how to navigate it, whether you're hiring or being hired.
1. Defining AI fluency
Job Seekers: Employers don't share one definition. Be specific about the tools you’ve built or used and the results they deliver.
Hiring Managers: Decide what AI fluency means for your roles before you hire, so you can identify the right skills with confidence.
2. Proving AI skills
Job Seekers: Expect to prove your AI skills, not just list them. Prepare concrete examples and be ready for hands-on assessments.
Hiring Managers: Faster hiring is bringing in more underqualified candidates. Use technical assessments to validate AI experience.
3. Balancing AI and fundamentals
Job Seekers: Show you can deliver both with and without AI. Strong fundamentals still set you apart.
Hiring Managers: Weigh AI fluency alongside independent judgment, and test whether candidates can demonstrate expertise without AI.
4. AI beyond the hire
Job Seekers: AI skills will shape your reviews and pay. Ask how roles measure AI use and keep building those skills on the job.
Hiring Managers: Build AI proficiency into performance reviews and compensation, with clear criteria employees understand.
5. Turning AI into value
Job Seekers: Frame your AI experience around business impact, not just tool use.
Hiring Managers: Start with the capabilities your business needs, then build teams that apply AI in commercially meaningful ways.
CONTACT US
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Ben Hodzic, Managing Director, Selby Jennings
About Selby Jennings
Selby Jennings is an award-winning, established financial sciences and services talent partner. Whether that be quantitative analytics, research & trading professionals developing complex financial models to improve a firm’s bottom line, or investment management specialists leading the charge on sustainable investments and greener assets to make an impact, we are here to build the right team for you, and have been doing so for 20 years. Working with the world’s largest financial institutions to revolutionary fintech start-ups with all their hiring needs, we have developed relationships with the brightest and boldest minds in banking and finance, and deliver this talent to leading, innovative businesses around the world. As part of Phaidon International, we are a trusted talent partner working with leading firms and organizations to solve their hiring challenges.
Methodology:
The research was conducted by Censuswide, among a sample of 500 US HR Professionals in the finance industry, aged 22 – 64 (with natural fallout for age). The data was collected between 8.19.2026 - 8.26.2026. Censuswide is a member of the Market Research Society (MRS) and the British Polling Council (BPC), and a signatory of the Global Data Quality Pledge. We adhere to the MRS Code of Conduct and ESOMAR principles.
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