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In recent years, consulting firms have introduced something new into the hiring process: assessment games. That’s right, these digital simulations, puzzles, and interactive exercises have become a staple of early-round screening for many consulting firms. For undergraduate and early-career candidates, assessment games are a critical first step. Today we’re going to talk about what these games look like, why firms use them, and how to prepare if you want to make it past the opening level. Let’s begin.
Why Consulting Firms Are Turning to Gamified Assessments
The consulting industry has always valued structured thinking, quantitative skill, and the ability to perform under pressure, but as candidate pools expand globally and as firms compete from talent from increasingly diverse academic backgrounds, consulting firms need ways to evaluate candidates objectively and efficiently.
Gamified assessments solve several recruiting challenges. For starters, they reduce unconscious bias. Games measure behavior, decision-making, and problem-solving styles rather than GPA, pedigree, or charisma in the interview room. In addition to this, games capture cognitive ability in real time, which can be far more effective than simply asking a candidate how they think.
Believe it or not, the hiring team can sometimes overlook a candidate’s key traits during an interview. With a gamified assessment, employers can measure a candidate’s ability to adapt, their tolerance for taking risks, and their strategic foresight extremely effectively.
A shift toward gamified assessments during the hiring process can also help level the playing field, especially when the candidate pool includes everyone from engineering PhD candidates to business analysts to pre-med students.
Problem Solving Through Play
Firms like McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) are paving the way with their “Problem-Solving Games (PSG),” where they can evaluate cognitive traits that are aligned with a consultant’s day-to-day work.
While the exact format of these games continues to evolve, candidates typically encounter simulations that include:
- Ecosystem creation scenarios: Candidates build a sustainable virtual ecosystem, balancing predator/prey relationships and environmental variables.
- Defense strategy puzzles: Participants design a defensive plan to protect a species from invasive predators using limited resources.
- Pattern recognition exercises: Candidates identify recurring sequences and adapt to changing constraints.
Believe it or not, none of the scenarios described above require any business knowledge. Instead, consulting firms are aiming to measure a candidate’s logical reasoning, their ability to allocate resources, how they work under pressure, their method of devising a strategy, and how they approach complex systems. If you’d like to try your hand at one of these tests, you can check out McKinsey’s here.
How Consulting Firms Use Game Data to Make Hiring Decisions
Gamified assessments are all about getting a read on your process. To do this, consulting recruiters use a combination of metrics that include:
- Time spent analyzing vs. executing.
- Willingness to test alternative strategies.
- How well you prioritize information.
- Pattern recognition speed.
- Accuracy under time pressure.
- Resilience when the game becomes more complex.
Keep in mind that the list above isn’t exhaustive. The bottom line is, consulting firms are trying to get a detailed picture of your thinking style.
Tips to Prepare
You can’t “memorize” your way though an assessment game the way you can with frameworks for case interviews, but you can strengthen the skills that are necessary to succeed. For starters, practice logic-based puzzles. This might include pattern recognition games or even Sudoku variants.
Next, research ecosystem models or play strategy games like Civilization or SimCity (yes, really). Games like these build intuition for balancing resources and weighing consequences. It’s also important to stay calm under the pressure of a ticking clock. In the context of a gamified assessment, you’re being tested on how you react when the clock ticks down, not whether you can perfect a strategy.
Remember to employ a structured strategy. In other words, treat the game like a case. Here, ask yourself: “What is the objective?” “What constraints exist?” “What resources do I have?” and “What happens if I change [variable]?”
Lastly, don’t obsess over one section of the game. If something isn’t working, pivot quickly—potential employers will appreciate your flexibility.
As consulting firms adopt more AI-enabled evaluation tools, gamified assessments will likely expand in scope and sophistication. Future assessments may include virtual reality collaboration challenges, AI-generated problem sets customized to each candidate, and simulations designed to test emotional intelligence. For now, one thing is clear—consulting interviews have evolved, and candidates who embrace the changes will have an advantage moving forward.
Rob Porter is an editor at Vault.
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