To be fair, they likely get a lot of applictions, and some portion of those applicants may be mentally ill in some way, possibly on drugs, or may otherwise be truly abysmal employees who don't care about anything. Tests like those can weed out people who clearly shouldn't be considered.

They have no place at a serious company hiring for a technical position, though. Usually 10 or so minutes of face-to-face talking is more than enough to tell you if your candidate is mentally ill, on drugs, or a major asshole.

Well, that's the thing. I happily stipulate that anyone that doesn't recognize that answering "strongly disagree" to "I think it is okay to steal office supplies" probably will not perform well on the job. Not so much due to the minor stealing issue, but more due to the inability to recognize this answer will never, ever get you hired (this is of course confounded with the people that decided the test and job is BS and they are willfully answering 'wrong').

We were all subjected to a test like this recently here. I'm talking most people have been here 5+ years. And suddenly my boss needs a test like this to figure out that I am introverted, that Bob likes to take charge, and so on??!!?!? Really? Fire that manager, if they are that incompetent. I refused to take the test, and fortunately my boss felt the same way and backed me 100%.

It's outrageous. You've observed my capabilities, you know I am great (or poor, or whatever), and suddenly I have to take a test where I am supposed to tell you if I am lonely, if I make friends, and so on. No. No. No.

the problem is discrimination lawsuits.

an old person contests a no-hire decision with "I wasn't hired because I was old"

option A: Hiring manager says "well I just thought you were a jerk"

option B: An objective and universally applied test scores the applicant as being 95% jerk, which is above the 60% cutoff that the company uses globally

which would you rather defend yourself with?

You might be correct about the reasoning. But those records are likely to work against if a suit ever hit full speed, because those scores could easily support the plaintiffs. "Gee, everyone over 55 ever hired has a 75%+ score. But your 25-54s range wildly from 56% and up."

Once the company asserts this defense, the plaintiffs ask for demographic details on every employee in the company, and what the scores were at time of hiring.

Think of them this way: they don't test your personality, they test whether you know what the obviously correct answers are for a personality screening test.

Now imagine what must be going through someone's head when they answer "never/strongly disagree" to the question "How often do you try to treat customers and coworkers with respect?" and the tests start to make a little more sense as a screening mechanism.

And whether you can lie for them.

I took a PHP test for a recruiter once. Half the questions were "what would you get if you typed this into the intrepeter?", which you weren't allowed to do. It seemed to come down to an honesty test.