Graduate recruitment looks like it is becoming an AI literacy test.
The old filter was closed-book horsepower.
Now the filter is how someone works with AI assistance: framing the problem, checking the output, pushing back when it smells wrong, then landing a view they can own.
McKinsey & Company is piloting the use of its internal AI assistant (“Lilli”) in its graduate recruitment process. Candidates use it to analyse a case and refine a conclusion.
This changes the talent premium. Bob Sternfels, McKinsey’s global managing partner, said candidates with liberal arts degrees may have been deprioritised in the past but bring “truly novel” thinking that complements models that struggle with “discontinuous leaps” in logic.
The bet is on aspiration, judgement, creativity- things models don’t do on their own.
That feels closer to how teams actually work now, not how interviews pretended work should look. The tools from Microsoft, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic are already in the room.
‘Closed book’ is becoming an artificial condition.
