McKinsey built a free AI tool so candidates stop paying $500/hour interview coaches

McKinsey launched a free AI practice tool in April that gives candidates unlimited attempts at the quantitative case study they will face in their interview. The tool is available globally to applicants for entry-level business analyst and associate roles. The firm says it is designed to level the playing field for candidates who cannot afford expensive consulting coaches.

The consulting interview coaching industry charges anywhere from $200 to $500 per hour. McKinsey’s free tool lets candidates practise the same quantitative scenarios they will encounter in the real interview, as many times as they want. Marie Christine Padberg, McKinsey’s global talent attraction co-leader, told Business Insider the tool also addresses nerves: “Doing quantitative things is one thing, but doing it while somebody’s watching you is something else.”

The practice tool is one half of a broader AI integration into McKinsey’s hiring process. The other half is more consequential. Since January, the firm has been piloting the use of its internal AI assistant Lilli during final-round interviews for business school graduates.

Candidates in the pilot are asked to use Lilli to analyse a case study and refine their conclusions. Interviewers evaluate how applicants prompt the system, assess its outputs, and apply them to a specific client scenario. The test measures curiosity and judgment, not prompt engineering.

McKinsey is not testing whether candidates can avoid AI. It is testing whether they can work with it effectively. The distinction reflects how consulting work itself has changed. Consultants are now expected to move beyond analysis that clients can do internally and toward problem framing, judgment, and implementation.

The scale of AI inside McKinsey makes the hiring shift logical. CEO Bob Sternfels said at CES in January that the firm now has approximately 25,000 AI agents supporting its 60,000 human employees. Eighteen months ago, that number was 3,000. More than 75% of McKinsey employees use Lilli monthly.

McKinsey has also cut approximately 200 technology roles as AI automates non-client-facing operations. The firm shrank its overall workforce by more than 10% between 2023 and 2025. Entry-level roles have been most affected, precisely the positions the AI practice tool is designed to help candidates secure.

The tension between AI creating and eliminating jobs is playing out across the hiring market. Forward deployed engineer postings are up 19x year on year. Claude Evangelists earn $240,000. Chief AI Officers command nearly $500,000. The jobs AI creates pay more and require different skills than the jobs it replaces.

McKinsey’s approach codifies that shift into the interview itself. The firm is not asking candidates whether they can use AI. It is making AI fluency a condition of entry. CaseBasix, a consulting interview preparation firm, said BCG and Bain are likely to follow with similar AI interview components.

The broader pattern is consistent. Detroit’s automakers are cutting white-collar staff while posting AI roles. Salesforce eliminated 4,000 support jobs after deploying AI agents. McKinsey is simultaneously reducing its workforce and redesigning its hiring process to select for people who can work alongside the technology that is making others redundant.

The quantitative component is especially important, Padberg said, because “even in an AI-enabled workplace, consultants still need to understand how numbers connect and what they mean.” AI can generate analysis. It cannot yet determine whether the analysis is relevant to a specific client’s problem. That judgment gap is what McKinsey’s interview is now designed to test.

The class of 2025 and 2026 graduates are entering a job market where AI fluency is no longer a bonus skill. At McKinsey, it is now part of the entrance exam. The free practice tool makes preparation accessible. The Lilli interview makes the standard clear: if you cannot collaborate with AI under pressure, you will not get the job.