The Job Interview Just Became a Business Savvy Test
AI hiring tests are exposing the curriculum gap no one tells us about — and it has nothing to do with knowing how to code
The job interview has quietly become a test of Business Savvy and most women’s development has never prepared us for it.
Something is changing in job interviews, and it is not what the headlines say it is.
Companies are handing candidates an AI coding tool, giving them a real assignment, and watching what happens. The business press is framing this as a tech story. It is not a tech story. It is a Business Savvy story — and if your leadership development never included that third of the career success equation, you are walking into these interviews with a structural disadvantage that has nothing to do with your competence.
Here is what is actually happening:
Peter Grafe, CEO of marketing firm BlueAlpha, now has every candidate — not just engineers, everyone — use AI tools to complete real assignments during their interviews.
Jacob Bennett, CEO of Crux Analytics, embeds a practical AI project into every role they hire for.
Nicole DeTommaso, a principal at Harlem Capital, has seen this play out in venture capital too. One candidate was given a week to build an AI agent that could brief partners on a sector before they invested. Another had to build a live dashboard showing portfolio company data. Neither was told which tools to use or how to approach it.
As DeTommaso put it: “You are not told which tools to use or how to go about it. You are just expected to figure it out.”
That is not a tech test. That is a judgment test.
And here is what Bennett says they are actually evaluating:
“Less the output itself and more how they think about deploying these tools. Where did they use them? Where didn’t they, and why?”
Read that again. They are not testing whether you can use Claude Code. They are testing whether you can think.
That is a business savvy test. It always was.
The divide that’s already forming
As Anna Wojciechowska reports in her Substack Automate This, a new survey of 2,400 knowledge workers across the US, UK and Europe puts numbers on what these hiring practices are actually sorting for.1
Companies are deliberately cultivating what they call an “AI elite” — a class of employees who are reportedly five times more productive than their peers and three times more likely to have received a promotion and a raise in the past year. Sixty percent of companies surveyed plan to lay off employees who don’t adopt AI. Seventy-seven percent say non-adopters won’t be considered for promotions.
That is not a future prediction. That is the landscape you are being hired into right now.
Here is what the survey does not say, but we will: the people who became AI fluent first tend to be the ones who already had more autonomy, more access to leadership, and more room to experiment. The people in operational roles — the ones doing the work AI is supposed to improve — were the last to hear about it.
The curriculum gap in women’s leadership development did not create this divide. But it puts us at greater risk of landing on the wrong side of it.
The to-do list problem
The companies doing this badly hand candidates a list of tasks and say: build this. What they get is a measure of execution speed, not judgment. They will hire fast movers who cannot tell them why something should be built in the first place, or whether it should be built at all.
The companies doing this well are watching something else entirely. They want to see that candidates understand the “why” behind the work — and use that understanding to shape the output so it actually moves the business forward. What questions are you asking? Where do you pause to stress-test an assumption? Where do you push back? Where do you make a strategic choice rather than just a fast one?
That distinction — between executing and thinking — is exactly what business savvy looks like in action.
The research that should give everyone pause
A 2025 field study of experienced software developers found that access to AI tools made them take 19% longer on realistic tasks, even though they expected the opposite.
Think about that. Sophisticated professionals with powerful tools produced slower results. Why? Because tools amplify thinking. They do not replace it. Hand someone a force multiplier without the judgment to direct it, and you have not made them more effective. You have made them more expensively ineffective.
Speed without strategic direction is not a business asset.
The curriculum gap hiding in plain sight
Here is what needs to be said.
Women’s leadership development has historically been rich in:
Personal Greatness — presence, communication, emotional intelligence, and
Engaging Others — collaboration, influence, relationships.
These matter enormously. They are two-thirds of what extraordinary leadership requires.
But if no one coached us on business, financial, and strategic acumen - the third third - we did not get a complete development experience. We got a two-legged stool. And try milking a cow on a two-legged stool!
Now the job interview demands a live demonstration of all three. The assignment is the easy part. The judgment about how to approach it, what to prioritize, what to skip, and why — that is what separates the candidates who stand out from the ones who just finish fast.
A visiting professor at Bayes Business School, Stefan Stern, put it plainly:
“Often when hiring, attitude is a more important consideration than today’s aptitude.”
I would add: and Business Savvy judgment is a more important consideration than either.
What’s a Woman to Do?
The good news is that business, financial, and strategic acumen are learnable. They are not personality traits or innate gifts. They are skills — and skills can be developed.
If you are heading into the job market, ask yourself:
Can I articulate why a course of action serves the business, not just how to execute it?
Can I explain where I would use a tool and where I wouldn’t — and give a strategic reason for each choice?
Before I dive in, what do I need to understand about this business to make the output actually useful?
What am I not building, and can I defend that choice?
What does success look like for this business — and does what I’m building move toward it?
If the answers feel shaky, that is not just a you problem. It is a professional development problem.
And it is exactly what Be Business Savvy exists to solve.
Lead ON!
Susan
If you’re following all the advice and it still feels like something’s in the way, I want you to know:
You are not the problem. You are working inside a system that’s withholding something from you.
I’m here to offer what that system can’t or won’t: the business, financial and strategic acumen that opens doors. You’ll find it in every article, in the Be Business Savvy Course and in Your Business Savvy Coach.
❤️ Like, share or restack this article — it’s the best way to help other women find it
📘 Explore the Be Business Savvy Course
I’m Susan Colantuono, best known for my TED Talk, “The Career Advice You Probably Didn’t Get“ and founder of Be Business Savvy.
I’m glad you’re here,
Susan
