Many aspiring applicants who subject themselves to McKinsey & Co.’s notoriously grueling hiring process now risk facing a demanding AI bot.
A McKinsey partner told the Wall Street Journal that the consulting giant – known for recruiting young Ivy League grads to help solve problems faced by cities and companies – plans to put candidates through the ringer with an AI simulation of real world problems.
Among the daunting hurdles, for example, could be a session dealing with the AI-generated mayor of a city that’s building a pricey new arena.
“The mayor is going to have some very important things that matter to her, and she’s going to want to hear your recommendations,” Saleem Zafar, a partner in the company’s Dallas office who helped develop the chatbot hiring tool, told the Journal.
If a city hires McKinsey to study where to place a new stadium, Zafar explained, the applicant will have to give a strategy in real time.
“But as you might share your recommendations, she might bring some additional concerns or additional layers of context,” the partner said.
Another portion of the pilot is allowing applicants to use AI as a problem-solving tool on a certain part of their test because the candidate will be expected to use the tech as employees.
One Reddit user called the vetting process “genuinely unlike any other test in the consulting recruitment space.”
McKinsey’s AI experiment is currently being used with undergrads hoping for jobs as business analysts — a position with a reported starting salary of $128,000.
McKinsey partners will observe how the high achievers do. The AI mayor doesn’t get to veto an applicant.
Zafar designed the pilot to reflect 80% of the challenges future consultants might face.
The mayor scenario is based in a strong reality. McKinsey consultants are often tapped by city leaders either for leadership roles or to find cost saving measures.
The hiring decision — the company has a reported 0.5% to 1.5% acceptance rate — will be made by humans who map experience in this type of problem solving. It may also help the company to find high-level talent quickly. Last year, McKinsey said it wanted to increase hiring by 12% in 2026.
“AI allows for a consistent client persona so that our in-room assessor can focus entirely on evaluating how the candidate listens, responds and builds trust,” said Blair Ciesil, McKinsey’s global attraction partner.
Other parts of the hiring process were already a challenge. There are various subreddits devoted to try to game out the challenges. Others seem to have fun cracking the consulting firm’s code.
Tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon were some of the first to use AI in hiring. Back in 2018, Amazon scrapped its AI hiring tool for its lack of gender neutrality. But has since become more the norm. McKinsey told the Journal that the AI tool – which is still in its piloting phase – is meant to add fairness to the hiring process.
McKinsey incorporated a Gen AI video game into the hiring process earlier this summer.