A friend from graduate school called a few weeks ago for help with an interview. He wanted to practice, and he wanted advice on the application, which included a personality profile. He wanted to know whether to answer the way the employer wanted or to answer as himself.
I told him to answer as himself, even though faking usually works. An applicant who has taken a few of these knows what a role is looking for and can produce it on the page. The prize for a convincing performance is an offer for a job that fights your wiring every day, and the quota comes with it.
From the hiring seat, I have hired people who looked perfect on paper. They included project managers whose profiles promised they would take charge of a room, account managers who tested extroverted and driven, and an engineer or two who came across as brilliant and organized. Some of them were exactly that. Some were not, and finding out after the start date is a terrible feeling for everyone involved, the new hire most of all.
The reverse is also true. One of my top-performing account managers tests like an introvert and is somewhat introverted in person. On the profile alone, that is not the result a sales manager wants to see in an account manager candidate, and passing would have been a defensible call. The ability to step up and calmly lead a customer through the sales process, develop leads, and build relationships over years comes from other gifts, and this account manager has them in abundance. Had we passed, it would have cost the company a great account manager and millions in sales.
So the test is a data point. A good test is a useful one, but my recommendation is for hiring managers not to treat it as the deciding factor. A resume, an interview, and a profile are each a slice of a person, and none of them is the whole picture. When a candidate games the profile, the hiring team loses that slice, and the candidate carries the risk.
If you answered the way they wanted and got the job, who did they hire?