We asked 8 Wall Street recruiters about the hottest trends in hiring across banking, trading, hedge funds and asset management

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• Bonuses for 2018 have been announced or paid, which means it's moving season on Wall Street.
• Business Insider spoke with a handful of headhunters who work with clients and place candidates across the industry about the trends driving the industry in 2019.
• Quants, data scientists, and coding skills are as in-demand as ever, but investment professionals haven't lost sight that relationships and fundamental investing prowess can't be overlooked.

Wall Street bonuses for 2018 have been announced or hit the bank by now. That means means it's moving season for the industry's bankers, traders, and portfolio managers.

Business Insider spoke with headhunters that work with the top firms and candidates in the industry to find out what's driving hiring in 2019.

Some things haven't changed: There remains in an insatiable appetite for quants, data scientists, and coding skills.

But that doesn't mean fundamental skills have gone out of vogue. At the end of the day, bosses still want talent with investment and business-analysis chops and a knack for developing relationships.

And the general sentiment that an economic recession is lurking on the horizon is coloring hiring decisions as well. Restructuring experts are getting a lot more calls, both buy-side and sell-side alike.

Here's what recruiters say are the hottest trends driving hiring on Wall Street in 2019.

"The buy-side is in flux." - Dave McCormack, founder and CEO of DMC Partners

From an investment banking perspective, I expect a lot of movement. There are both cyclical and secular changes to the business, some driven by extreme regulation like MiFID, which has impacted certain regions over others, but I expect this will even out over time as real money managers start to realize that they need the sell-side.

Within equities where volatility specifically had a bumper year in 2018, I'm expecting a lot of movement. No one is necessarily adding net headcount but there are three clear leaders and there's a dog fight in the middle for market share. It really is a case of the haves and have nots, but one has to play offense in this business. Even if that means getting smaller, you have to get better - therefore we are still in this upgrade cycle. Not all of it is driven by human capital - there needs to be considerable investment in technology, but the sell-side is a relationship business.

The buy-side is in flux. In many respects, the long short model is broken and there is considerable fee pressure, but it is also a case of the haves and have nots. The big guys are getting bigger and those in the middle that have had poor performance or can't scale are being blown out. The fourth quarter was tough for a lot of funds but January numbers have been strong, so we'll know very soon who redeems and where that money goes.

If the theme on the sell-side is upgrading, the theme on the alternative buy-side is diversification. We find the quant model to be quite stale but those running good fundamental businesses will continue to diversify.

"Quants are changing every aspect of Wall Street." - Jason Schulman, partner at Long Ridge Partners

A major hiring trend we've seen emerging for a while has been the demand for quantitatively oriented investment professionals, mainly data scientists. They are changing every aspect of Wall Street, from how information is stored to creating alternative ways to generate alpha. Today, being able to create algorithms to better utilize large data sets is a powerful tool that every large financial institution is looking to grow.

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Data scientists from the big tech companies have been heavily recruited to make the move to finance, and are getting hefty pay days to do so. There are still a lot of unknowns for some of the firms and the specific ways they'll use the data, but the demand has not slowed. If your resume doesn't include programming languages such as Python and SQL, you better start learning!

Some of the longer tenured analysts and portfolio managers at hedge funds are concerned that the newer folks spend more time looking at credit card data and satellite imagery than they do getting to know a company and its businesses. Hedge fund investing today seems to be a game of resources - who has a team big enough to dig deep into fundamentals while also analyzing large data sets from various sources.

"Restructuring experts are now in demand." - Alexis DuFresne, director and head of marketing and investor relations search, Whitney Group

In recent years, very rarely do we see career movement from sell-side to buy-side (outside of junior analysts). This is largely due to the fact that hedge funds are now a mature business, and there are candidates pools that already exist at like funds from which to hire. What we're noticing now is that restructuring experts are now in demand for credit and credit-oriented shops. Since these roles are less common on the buy-side, and therefore present a smaller candidate pool, we are noting that we are seeing these professionals being pulled from not only "competitor" firms, but also from the sell-side, and consultancy.

Sectors like marketing and IR are seeing the least movement from sell-side to buy-side, as it is a buyer's market, and there are highly qualified candidates already in the seat and with a track record looking for new homes as the hedge and private sectors shake out (particularly long/short equity). Clients want marketing professionals with existing relationships whom they do not have to re-train, and they want professionals with a history of successfully raising assets (and, to dig deeper, from specific countries, regions, or investor bases).

"The focus is technology." - Jeanne Branthover, managing partner and co-head of New York office for DHR International

"There's caution across the Street." - Oliver Cooke, managing director and head of Selby Jennings, North America

There is a definitely caution across the street on hiring this year versus last year.

There's a general acceptance that an economic slowdown could be on the horizon in the next 12-24 months. When it exactly happens, how big it is - nobody knows.

Particularly on the sell side, all hires are getting a little bit of extra scrutiny. There is a sort of caution around what everybody's doing.

Despite that, there's still a war for talent amongst those high-growth and high-demand areas, like technology and quants/data science.

Those areas will still see growth this year and huge demand for top talent is driving up compensation, particularly at the associate-VP level. Strong candidates with a top notch education, computer science expertise, quant skills and the soft skills to match are capable of getting three to five offers from the big banks and funds.

"We are expecting an active recruiting season." - Charles Anderson, principal and US head of investment banking practice, Heidrick & Struggles

Within US Investment banking at the managing director level, we are expecting an active recruiting season. This is not based on compensation disappointment, but based on the stated intentions from some major bulge bracket institutions to grow headcount.

Active sectors appear to be similar to last year: technology, healthcare, consumer, and increasingly financial institutions.

"There's this ongoing tug of war between very different worlds." - Hugh Norton-Smith, cofounder and partner, Intersection Growth Partners

We're witnessing an extraordinary amount of cross-pollination between Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

Growth-stage fintechs often need to diversify their leadership away from product and engineering folks. Most in-demand roles for these firms are chief risk and chief compliance officers, a good example being Coinbase's recent hire of a CCO from Pershing. We're also starting to see chief human resource officers migrate from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. These are sophisticated leaders who bring institutional polish and experience scaling global businesses.

At the same time, established financial services firms need growth-mindset talent who bring expertise on topics like alt data, digital currencies, and machine learning.

So there's this ongoing tug of war between very different worlds, which are on a collision path. Navigating the nuanced cultural differences, in particular, is vital.

"Strategy is an increasingly important area." - Arnaud Tesson, head of Egon Zehnder's US asset management practice

An asset management company used to be a pretty rudimentary business to run, with focus primarily on manufacturing and distribution. Now, it has become more complex, and senior roles have changed. New needs have surfaced, while others have increased.

Strategy is an increasingly important area, starting with the head of strategy and then everything under it. Several of the large asset managers have changed their head of strategy in the last year, and built up their strategy function. Firms are also looking to strengthen product management. One thing the industry is migrating towards is thinking about their offerings in terms of product. The product manager is thinking value proposition first and is the point person who deals with the investment teams and sales to think holistically. It's not the center of an organization like at P&G, but we're trending in that direction over the longer term.