About these tests

Career Gym has a thorough writeup about these types of questions:

Personality questionnaires are a popular type of interview test for employers to get an idea of what makes you “tick” and whether your personality would be a good fit for the position they are filling.

(I disagree that they really help find a good fit that much. Almost everyone applying knows that they should at least not give "bad" answers.)

They also mention a few things to keep in mind:

Consistency: Most personality questionnaires will have several questions that measure the same traits, so it is important to answer consistently and truthfully – otherwise you will have very odd results which may raise the suspicion of you trying to manipulate the outcome.

Anecdotally, I've heard exactly this from friends who are/were managers at retail chains. One of the main results they would see would be a grade on how consistent the applicant's answers were.

There's a lot more, but I'll add a couple of the most relevant points below:

Honesty: There are usually a few questions intended to measure your honesty, so be honest! For example “I have never told a lie” – everyone has told at least one lie in their life, so answering negatively may, ironically, be a red flag that you are being dishonest in your answers.

Speed: Although these tests are usually not timed, it is important to choose your first (or “gut”) reaction as this is the most likely indicator of your true personality. Note that for computer-based tests there may be indicators to let employers know if you hesitated on any answer, so keep that in mind.

What do do next

Depending on how you see this type of test ethically, I'd suggest a few options:

• Refuse to take it, look elsewhere
• Take it and give reasonable, consistent answers that you think will match their expectations
• Take it and put down exactly what you think matches your behavior

These are mostly just a cheap and simple pass/fail filter for HR against massive amounts of applicants. If you're interested in the job and this type of questionnaire doesn't turn you off entirely, as other answers have mentioned, just answer honestly.

Finally, I'd be interested to know what type of job this is. I remember often seeing these when I applied for retail, food service, and other jobs at national chains, franchises, or entry level positions at larger corporations. In these cases, in my experience, the people hiring didn't make the decision to use this system, some HR director in the corporate office did. Most of the people on the team you work with will roll their eyes and say "oh yeah, that silly test" if you bring it up.

Side note: Career Gym has a notice that they are shutting down May 2021. Archived link here.