Kearney Recruitment Test: 40 Questions, 60 Minutes, and Negative Marking

Last Updated on July 20, 2026

By Florian Smeritschnig, former McKinsey Senior Consultant · Updated July 2026

The Kearney recruitment test is a 60-minute online assessment with 40 multiple-choice questions covering quantitative reasoning, verbal reasoning, and case-style data interpretation. Correct answers earn 5 points, wrong answers deduct 1, and no personality traits are measured. Most candidates lose this test on the clock rather than on the content, because 1.5 minutes per question leaves no room to recover from a slow start.

I evaluated candidates at McKinsey and have run 2,200+ mock interviews and coaching sessions since. The pattern I see on aptitude screens like this one is consistent: strong applicants prepare hard for the case interview and treat the online assessment as a formality, then get cut before a single consultant sees their structuring skills.

Key Takeaways

• The Kearney recruitment test is 40 questions in 60 minutes, split across six sections: two quantitative, two verbal, and two case-data.
• Scoring is +5 for a correct answer and -1 for a wrong one, so the maximum score is 200 points.
• Because each question has four or five options, a blank answer is mathematically worse than a guess. Guessing at random carries a positive expected value of +0.2 points.
• Some offices run an Excel-based variant instead of the standard test. Confirm which one you face before you prepare.
• Kearney publishes no official passing score. The screen is relative to your applicant pool, not against a fixed cutoff.

What the Kearney Recruitment Test Is

Definition: The Kearney recruitment test is a timed online aptitude assessment used by Kearney to screen consulting applicants. It combines numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning, and business-case data interpretation into 40 multiple-choice questions delivered in 60 minutes, with points deducted for incorrect answers.

Kearney uses the test the way McKinsey uses Solve, BCG uses its online case, and Bain uses SOVA and TestGorilla. It is a filter that runs before or alongside the interview rounds.

Two reasons drive it.

First, cost. Screening a large applicant pool with a standardized test is far cheaper than paying consultants to run first-round cases. Every candidate the test removes is an hour of billable time the firm keeps.

Second, comparability. The questions rotate between candidates, but the metrics stay fixed. That gives Kearney a consistent data point it can compare across candidates, offices, and recruiting cycles.

The practical takeaway matters more than the rationale: the skills the test measures are the same skills the case interview measures. Chart reading, fast arithmetic, and extracting a conclusion from a wall of data all show up in both. Preparing for one raises your score on the other.

Before anything else, ask your Kearney recruiter which assessment your office actually uses. Not every office runs the standard test, and the Excel variant covered below requires different preparation.

Kearney Online Assessment Format: Six Sections, 40 Questions

The Kearney online assessment is structured into six sections across three skill areas. Each question has one correct answer among four or five options.

Duration: 60 minutes for all 40 questions, which works out to exactly 1.5 minutes per question.

That time limit is the hardest part of the assessment. Given unlimited time, most candidates who reach this stage could answer nearly every question correctly. The difficulty is manufactured entirely by the clock. Candidates I coach rarely report that a question stumped them; they report running out of runway in the final section and leaving five or six questions untouched.

How to Budget Your 60 Minutes

Averaging 1.5 minutes per question is not the same as spending 1.5 minutes on each question. The reading-passage section front-loads a long text you read once and then mine for eight answers, so it needs more time up front and less per question afterward. The statement questions, once you know the data-sufficiency pattern, run faster than average.

A workable allocation:

Set checkpoints rather than watching every question. At the 30-minute mark you should have cleared 20 questions. If you are at 14, you are not going to catch up by working faster on hard questions. You catch up by abandoning them.

How the Kearney Test Is Scored (and Why You Should Never Leave a Question Blank)

This is the section that changes scores, and it is the one no competing guide gets right.

The standard advice, including the advice this article carried in earlier versions, is: if you are not sure, skip the question to avoid the penalty. That advice is mathematically wrong under Kearney’s scoring rules.

Work through the expected value. A five-option question with +5 for correct and -1 for wrong gives a random guess a 20% chance of scoring 5 points and an 80% chance of losing 1:

(0.2 x 5) + (0.8 x -1) = 1.0 – 0.8 = +0.2 points

A blank answer scores exactly 0. So a pure coin-flip guess with no reasoning at all beats leaving the question empty. The negative marking is calibrated to discourage careless guessing, not to make guessing irrational.

It gets more lopsided the moment you eliminate even one option:

On a 40-question test, the difference between answering everything and leaving six questions blank is roughly 3 to 12 points depending on how much you can eliminate. In a relative screen, that range decides borderline cases.

Two caveats. First, this assumes the +5 / -1 structure holds for your version of the test; read your instructions on test day and confirm the numbers before applying the logic. Second, this is an argument for never leaving a blank, not for rushing. Guessing is what you do with the two minutes of buffer at the end, on the questions you could not reach. It is not a substitute for working carefully through the questions you can solve.

The practical rule: work the test in order, mark anything you cannot crack within roughly two minutes, move on, and spend the final buffer filling every remaining blank with your best elimination-based guess.

The Six Question Types, With Real Examples

Kearney publishes an official mock recruitment test that mirrors the real format. The examples below follow its structure.

Quantitative: Logical Counting

These questions test whether you can handle quantitative data and solve straightforward mathematical or business problems at speed. They come in two flavors.

Purely mathematical:

If 3/8 of x is 7 more than 1/5 of x, what is 3/8 of x?

Embedded in a business context:

Anna sells cookies at school that her mother prepares. She buys them from her mother at the standard cost of preparing them. Her mother has an extra discount that brings the real cost down by 15%. Anna’s profit margin is 30% of the price she sells at. What share of Anna’s profit comes from her mother’s extra discount?

The business-context version is where non-business candidates lose time. The math is school-level. The delay comes from translating “profit margin,” “standard cost,” and “discount” into the right equation.

Quantitative: Statements

These mirror GMAT data-sufficiency questions. You get a question and two statements, and you decide which statements are sufficient to answer it.

If John saved $800 of his earnings last month, how much did John earn last month?

(1) Last month, John spent half of his earnings on living costs.
(2) Of his earnings last month, John paid twice as much for clothing as he saved.

A. Statement (1) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (2) ALONE is not sufficient
B. Statement (2) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (1) ALONE is not sufficient
C. BOTH statements TOGETHER are sufficient, but NEITHER statement ALONE is sufficient
D. EACH statement ALONE is sufficient
E. Statements (1) and (2) TOGETHER are NOT sufficient

The trap in data sufficiency is solving the problem. You do not need the answer, only whether the answer is reachable. Candidates who compute the full solution burn 90 seconds on a question that takes 30 once you recognize the pattern.

Verbal: Understanding of Logical Text

You read a short paragraph and answer one question about the argument’s structure or hidden assumption.

When news periodicals begin forecasting a recession, people tend to spend less money on discretionary purchases. Therefore, the perceived threat of recession decreases people’s willingness to buy products they regard as optional or luxury goods.

The argument above assumes that:

A. There are more luxury goods available after a recession is forecast
B. The latest drop in luxury goods sales results from a recession
C. People’s perception of the threat of recession increases when news periodicals begin forecasting a recession
D. The people who spent the most before a recession was forecast were among those who cut spending after the recession became apparent

The question asks what the argument takes for granted, not what it proves. Answer C is the unstated bridge between “periodicals forecast” and “people perceive a threat.”

Verbal: Reading a Passage

You read one longer text, roughly a page, then answer several questions on it with five options each.

According to the passage, all of the following are aspects of Braudel’s approach to history EXCEPT that he

A. Attempted to unify various social sciences
B. Studied social and economic activities that occurred across national boundaries
C. Pointed out the link between increased economic activity and the rise of nationalism
D. Examined seemingly unexciting aspects of everyday life
E. Visualized history as involving several different time frames

Read the questions before the passage. You are looking for specific facts, not building a general understanding, and knowing what to hunt for cuts your reading time roughly in half.

Case Studies: Reading a Table

You get an organized data set and a question that requires locating the right values and running a calculation on them, usually a multiplication or a division.

On average, how much market value in Asia would a Uranium employee create per week in company ABC (52 weeks a year)?

Case Studies: Reading a Graph

Same logic, applied to a chart. Identify the variables, plug them into a simple formula, and select the closest option.

In 2007, there were 667,284 unemployed people in Bulgaria, whose population was 13.1% of Poland’s that year. With a fixed annual population increase of 0.639%, approximately how many unemployed people were in Poland in 2009?

Note the word “approximately.” Precise arithmetic is wasted effort when the answer options are far apart. Round aggressively, get to the right order of magnitude, and pick the nearest option. Our chart interpretation guide covers the estimation techniques that make this fast.

The Kearney Excel Test: The Variant Most Candidates Miss

Some Kearney offices replace the standard Kearney recruitment test with an Excel-based screening test. This is the fastest-growing question I get about Kearney recruiting, and it is the variant almost no preparation material covers.

The Excel test assesses the same underlying skills, speed with numbers and the ability to pull a conclusion from messy data, but the delivery changes what you should practice. Instead of selecting from multiple-choice options, you work inside a spreadsheet: building calculations, structuring a small model, and producing outputs from a raw data set.

If your office runs the Excel version, adjust your preparation:

• Know your shortcuts. Keyboard navigation, not mouse clicks, is what makes the time limit survivable.
• Practice the core functions cold. SUMIF, VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, and pivot tables cover most of what these tests require.
• Structure before you calculate. Lay out your inputs, calculations, and outputs in separate blocks. It is faster and it makes your work legible if a human reviews the file.
• Sense-check every output. A misplaced cell reference produces a confidently wrong number, and unlike a multiple-choice test, nothing flags it for you.

There is no way to know which version you face without asking. Email your recruiter and ask directly which assessment your office administers and whether it is Excel-based. Recruiters answer this question routinely.

How to Prepare for the Kearney Recruitment Test

Two to three weeks of focused preparation is enough for most candidates to be ready for the Kearney recruitment test. The skills are trainable, and they overlap almost completely with case interview skills.

Build Your Business Acumen

If you come from a business background, skip this. If you do not, the business-context questions will cost you time you cannot afford, because you will be decoding vocabulary while the clock runs.

Work through business cases, read The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, or the Financial Times, and use Investopedia’s glossary to close specific gaps. Reading what consulting firms publish (McKinsey Global Institute, BCG Insights, Bain Publications) also builds the pattern recognition the case sections reward.

Sharpen Your Mental Math

The math never exceeds school level. No specific degree helps you here. What matters is speed under pressure, and that splits into two separate skills: setting up the correct calculation (the logic) and executing it quickly on paper (the arithmetic). Most candidates are fine at one and slow at the other.

Our case interview math guide covers what to expect and how to train it. If you want structured drilling, the StrategyCase Case Interview Math Mastery program includes 29 videos and 2,000+ practice drills built for exactly this kind of timed arithmetic.

Train Verbal Reasoning and Data Interpretation

Three distinct skills sit inside the verbal and case sections:

• Reading comprehension: finding the specific fact inside a dense business text rather than absorbing the whole thing. Practice on research papers and long-form business articles.
• Chart and table interpretation: drawing correct conclusions from data quickly, including knowing when an answer is unsupported.
• Logical reasoning: deducing valid conclusions from given statements. GMAT critical-reasoning questions are the closest free practice material available.

Practice Under Real Test Conditions

Emulate the actual conditions or the practice does not transfer. Set a 60-minute timer. Work on screen, not on printouts, because reading data off a monitor while writing on paper is a distinct skill. Assume no calculator: the standard test is pen-and-paper arithmetic, though this is candidate-reported rather than published by Kearney, so confirm it in your test instructions.

SHL’s free practice tests are the closest publicly available analog for the numerical and verbal sections. Kearney’s own mock test, linked above, is the single best resource because it matches the real format exactly.

Track Your Progress

Score every practice run by section, not just overall. The point of tracking is to find where your time actually goes. Most candidates discover their weakness is one specific section, and fixing that section is worth more than another twenty hours of general practice.

This is the same diagnostic approach we use across StrategyCase preparation: identify the specific skill that is costing you points, then drill that skill, rather than repeating full practice tests and hoping the average improves.

Seven Tactics for Test Day

1. Do not compare answers with peers. The format is fixed but the questions rotate. Numbers and content change between candidates, so a “remembered” answer is worse than useless.

2. Fill every blank. Covered above in detail. A guess beats a blank on every question type in this test.

3. Confirm what the question asks before you solve. The most expensive mistake on a timed test is solving the wrong question correctly. Read the prompt twice; it takes five seconds and prevents a 90-second loss.

4. Scan, then read. For any question with a wall of text or data: read the question first, identify what information you need, locate it, and only then read that section closely. Never read a passage end to end before knowing what you are looking for.

5. Hold your checkpoints. 20 questions at the 30-minute mark. If you are behind, start abandoning hard questions immediately rather than gradually.

6. Approach every question the same way. A repeatable process (read question, find objective, locate data, calculate, select) removes decisions and speeds you up. Improvising on each question costs time you do not have.

7. Take structured notes. Write down intermediate steps and key observations. The case sections in particular may require you to reuse a value you already calculated, and recalculating it is pure waste.

What Happens After the Kearney Recruitment Test

If you clear the screen, you move into Kearney’s interview rounds. Kearney’s published recruiting process runs three rounds of two interviews each: first with a Senior Business Analyst or Associate, then a Manager or Principal, then a Partner. Each pairs a case with fit questions.

In offices where the test runs as a screen, you will typically also have an HR conversation before the formal rounds. In offices where it runs alongside the first round, your test result feeds into the same decision as your first-round case performance.

Kearney does not publish a passing score, and no credible source has one. Treat it as a relative screen: you are ranked against the applicant pool for your office and cycle, not measured against a fixed line. That is why leaving points on the table through blank answers matters more than it feels like it should.

Once you are through, your preparation shifts entirely to the case. Our Kearney consulting guide covers the firm’s interview style, and the case interview guide covers the fundamentals.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Guides

• Consulting Assessment Tests: Every Firm’s Online Screen covers how Kearney’s test compares to every other firm’s screen.
• L.E.K. Numerical Reasoning Test covers the closest equivalent assessment at another Tier-2 firm.
• The BCG Cognitive Test covers the MBB aptitude screen closest to Kearney’s in format.
• Consulting Cover Letter and Resume Guide covers the stage that gets you invited to the test in the first place.
• How to Stand Out as a Consulting Applicant covers what separates candidates once everyone has cleared the screen.

The Bottom Line

The Kearney recruitment test rewards preparation more predictably than almost any other stage of consulting recruiting. The format is fixed, the question types are public, Kearney publishes a mock test, and the skills transfer directly to your case interviews.

Three things decide your score:

• Speed, not difficulty. At 1.5 minutes per question, your constraint is the clock. Practice against a timer or you are not practicing the actual test.
• Answering everything. Negative marking punishes carelessness, not guessing. A blank is worth 0 and a guess is worth more than 0.
• Knowing which version you face. The Excel variant needs different preparation, and one email to your recruiter settles it.

Start with Kearney’s own mock test to calibrate where you stand, then train the section that costs you the most time.

If you want structured practice for the math and chart work that this test and the case interview both demand, the StrategyCase Case Interview Academy covers both in one place, built from what I learned evaluating candidates at McKinsey and coaching 700+ people into offers at MBB, Tier-2, and Big 4 firms.

About the author: Florian Smeritschnig spent five years at McKinsey as a Senior Consultant, where he evaluated candidates, and has delivered 2,200+ mock interviews and coaching sessions since. His clients have secured 700+ offers at MBB, Tier-2 firms, Big 4 consulting divisions, in-house consultancies, and boutiques. He is the author of “The 1%: Conquer Your Consulting Case Interview.”