Consultant: Talent Management & Career Guidance at Independent
As an experienced user and consultant of psychometric assessment I must agree with most of what Pleiades posted.
In terms of SA Labour legislation and practice, one can most certainly use psychometric assessment to aid in the selection process, provided it, as per labour legislation, doesn't unfairly discriminate. As long as you use assessments that have been registered by the HPCSA, you're covered. They have been proven to accurately assess what they claim to assess and have been proven to be accurate across different demographics. They must however, be used as part of a thorough selection process and not as the silver bullet. The strongest argument is whether you would rather gather as much scientific information as possible to make a balanced informed decision or go with an untrained interviewer's gut feel. Most companies have learned the hard way that is more cost effective to spend a bit more upfront gathering as much information as possible, than to hire the wrong person and have to replace them.
"Results create a sterotype of the individual who may be highly adaptable" - if they are highly adaptable that should have been been demonstrated to existing manager or company and should definitely present in the report of any reputable personality or behaviour type assessment. If the position is about leadership potential then a tool that asesses that should be used. (and there are ones for that). So it's important that the right tools are being used to assess the right things