Job interviews aren't just about past experience anymore...
In a growing number of white-collar positions, AI is replacing spreadsheets and word processors as a must-have skill.
You're expected to know it. And you're expected to use it.
Look no further than consulting titan McKinsey. It recently began a trial for new hires that requires them to use the company's AI system, Lilli.
Candidates had to prompt Lilli to review a case, refine conclusions, and analyze the results.
It's a clear sign that a major consulting firm believes AI is a non-negotiable part of the job.
And for corporate America, this is just the start...
Welcome to the next frontier of AI usage...
We already know AI will help businesses become more efficient. And for many, it will determine which companies succeed and which ones fail.
But it's hard to quantify those odds of success. "AI usage" is a fuzzy metric.
A company can claim everyone has access to a chatbot... and still get very little productivity out of it. Even McKinsey makes this point in its work on agentic AI.
AI agents are as close to an employee replacement as we have right now. They aren't fully self-sufficient. They're designed to complete a specific task or set of tasks with minimal human input.
Many times, agents can take the place of a junior employee at a consulting firm (or something similar).
It's not a one-for-one comparison. One agent doesn't replace one employee. Rather, each agent can do one employee task.
So one agent might compile data... while another runs a certain type of analysis... and a third creates a specific style of document.
When you string enough of those tasks together under human supervision, it starts to look like a team.
That's why McKinsey has created 25,000 AI agents over the past two years...
And it's why the consulting giant hopes to grow to at least one agent per human employee in the next year or so. CEO Bob Sternfels describes a "workforce" that includes tens of thousands of agents on top of roughly 40,000 staff.
This trend won't be limited to McKinsey. It will likely become a new measure for successful businesses. We won't focus on pure human head-count growth anymore.
Instead, we'll look at total workforce.
McKinsey, for instance, has a "workforce" of more than 60,000 – between 40,000 employees and 25,000 AI agents.
So the way we look at staffing will change. And with it, a few old assumptions will have to change, too.
First, head-count cuts will no longer be an automatic red flag for investors...
McKinsey's human workforce peaked around 45,000 in 2023. Since then, it has been shrinking. And the company has discussed cutting another 10% over the next year and a half.
Layoffs used to be a sign of problems with the business. But if it's paired with "hiring" AI agents, that's not necessarily the case anymore.
Second, organizational "pyramids" will get flatter.
Traditional consulting models (and many other businesses) rely on armies of junior employees feeding a smaller group of senior decision-makers.
But in the future, AI agents will take on more junior-level tasks. The workforce will be more evenly distributed across all seniority levels.
And third, the competitive gap will widen.
Only about 50% of companies have "broadly" or fully adopted AI agents.
McKinsey's own research argues that AI agents can speed up work by 40% to 50%... and reduce costs by more than 40% in certain settings.
The businesses that embrace the new AI frontier will have a big advantage over the laggards.
McKinsey's new workforce vision is one to watch...
We aren't trying to say that head count in the traditional sense doesn't matter. But soon, human workers alone won't be enough to determine the success or failure of a business.
Not many companies are speaking in terms of "total" workforce (humans plus AI agents) today. But many more will be in the near future.
And it won't take long for them to pull ahead of their peers.
Regards,
Joel Litman
February 23, 2026
