A year-and-a-half ago, absorption consulting steadfast McKinsey had conscionable 3,000 AI agents successful its possession, with its 40,000 employees acold outnumbering its agentic fleet. But successful conscionable 18 months, that fig has grown much than 500% to astir 20,000 AI agents supporting the company’s work, CEO Bob Sternfels said connected Harvard Business Review’s Ideacast. Now, the institution is evaluating however good occupation candidates tin enactment with its AI instrumentality arsenic portion of the interrogation process.
The consulting steadfast is asking candidates to usage its interior AI instrumentality Lilli successful a trial during its hiring process, according to consulting interrogation mentation institution CaseBasix, which helps candidates lick McKinsey, BCG, and Bain cases. In a blog post, CaseBasix says it gathered accusation from interior sources who accidental immoderate candidates would beryllium asked to enactment with the company’s AI instrumentality arsenic portion of a last circular AI interview. The Financial Times besides reported connected McKinsey’s absorption connected concern schoolhouse students utilizing Lilli, citing radical acquainted with the matter.
The determination comes arsenic the blue-chip institution seeks to further instrumentality AI into its operations, pursuing skills that widen beyond the interpersonal and problem-solving traits usually required of a consultant. Companies similar McKinsey are looking for candidates who tin beryllium AI-ready connected time 1 arsenic the exertion becomes indispensable to occupation functions.
In his interrogation with HBR, Sternfels said AI models person developed an expertise successful problem-solving, and that the institution would beryllium “looking much astatine wide arts majors, whom we had deprioritized,” for imaginable sources of creativity arsenic the steadfast moves to find originative solutions beyond “logical adjacent steps.” It’s not conscionable McKinsey, different leaders are looking to prosecute wide arts graduates similar CEO of IT steadfast Cognizant Technology Solutions Ravi Kumar S, who says he’s recruiting candidates with wide arts degrees.
Putting AI skills to the test
McKinsey hasn’t shied distant from AI successful the hiring process. The institution encourages AI usage successful the exertion process connected its career page, saying that candidates tin usage the exertion to refine résumés and signifier interrogation questions. Though it cautions candidates to usage the exertion responsibly, saying usage of the exertion during assessments and for generating interrogation responses, arsenic good arsenic embellishment, is not permitted.
“We invited those who stock our curiosity astir AI and its potential,” the company’s vocation leafage says.
But the aviator programme goes a measurement further. According to Casebasix, the AI interrogation whitethorn beryllium an further measurement successful the exertion process, alongside the lawsuit interrogation and a idiosyncratic acquisition interrogation for candidates successful the U.S. and North America.
“In the McKinsey AI Interview, you are expected to punctual the AI, reappraisal its output, and use judgement to nutrient a wide and structured response,” the Casebasix station said. The station says that McKinsey is looking to trial brushed skills indispensable to moving astatine the consulting firm—and for moving with the company’s AI—including collaboration and reasoning.
A McKinsey spokesperson did not instantly respond to Fortune’s petition for comment.
An agentic workforce reshaping the quality of consulting work
Sternfels predicted the institution volition follow AI aggressively wrong the pursuing months. “In different 18 months I deliberation each worker volition beryllium enabled by 1 oregon much agents,” Sternfels said connected HBR’s Ideacast. “We’ll person a workforce that is quality and agentic, and we’re going to person to navigate that.”
That alteration could dramatically displacement the enactment that McKinsey performs. With AI agents making the company’s employees much productive, Sternfels says that the AI adoption could fundamentally alteration McKinsey’s model.
“We’re migrating distant from axenic advisory work, distant from the fee-for-service model,” Sternfels said. “We’re moving to much of an outcomes-based model, wherever we place a associated concern lawsuit with our clients, and we underwrite the result by tying our fees to the interaction our enactment delivers for them”
But the quality skills that Sternfels says AI can’t replace: creativity, aspiration, and judgment. “There isn’t information successful AI models; determination isn’t judgment,” Sternfel said. “Humans request to enforce those parameters.”
