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The private markets industry is undergoing a seismic shift, and its top talent is growing restless.
More investment staffers are calling into question the classic investment-banker-to-associate-to-Ivy-League-MBA route that the industry has relied on for decades. There’s an uneasy feeling in midtown Manhattan that the typical talent pipeline isn’t preparing the next generation for the rapid evolution in private equity.
After two decades of unbridled growth, a combination of higher debt costs, regulatory changes, a shifting geopolitical landscape and the rise of AI has created an environment in which firms must expand their product offerings and maintain a steady flow of distributions to remain relevant to their limited partners.
When asked about their organization’s ability to innovate to stay competitive over the next decade, only 20.2% of respondents to a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association survey of its members responded with “very confident.” Nearly 40% of respondents were “somewhat confident"; 28.3% were neutral, and 13% had little confidence that their firms would innovate.
“The collision of all these things happening at the same time is creating a much bigger inflection point than at any point in anybody’s career,” said CAIA Association CEO John Bowman. “The [CAIA] members are saying that they don’t feel confident that their firms are designed for this.”
For talent, compensation and overall job satisfaction are most closely tied to fundraising and fund performance. In the current moment, those metrics are in flux.
Related read: Private equity talent isn’t going anywhere—for now
Private capital fundraising has been on a steady downward trajectory since its 2021 peak. From 2024 to 2025, the decline was 13.6%, according to PitchBook’s 2025 Annual Global Private Market Fundraising Report. PE as a share of total capital raised shrank to 32.9%—down from 41.3% in 2024—as the asset class continues to endure an exit drought.
“Private equity is still an attractive market even under the short-term cyclicality around fundraising, but people are being discerning. They’re reevaluating who those winners and losers are going to be,” said David Barrett, a partner at BraddockMatthewsBarrett, an executive search firm that places talent at both asset owners and managers.
Still, these rumblings from industry employees likely won’t lead to much turnover or exodus from firms, said Chris Connors, a principal at compensation consulting firm Johnson Associates.
“Whether or not private equity talent is satisfied, I think most people in the industry right now are happy to be employed,” Connors said. “I’m not suggesting there’s no hiring going on, but it’s not robust.”
Dissatisfaction with the direction of talent is also coming from the top down. Bowman said leadership at private investment funds is “unconvinced” that their talent has the right skills to move into the next decade. Here, CAIA advocates a shift from specific industry expertise to a multidisciplinary “systems thinking” approach, where talent have more varied skill sets, beyond the traditional route from investment banker to fund associate to MBA.
“On the GP side, you’ve had this very linear historical professional development, and those folks, while brilliant in certain competencies and with certain skills on average, are not great at looking across disciplines and connecting dots,” Bowman said.
“I think this idea of our homogenous and somewhat dogmatic view on where we find and what we’re looking for needs to be blown up. We need a much more diverse set of individuals across the organization than we’ve ever needed before.”
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