Software consulting places and body shops (unfortunately the line is increasingly blurry) don't generally do them. There was small software company in Jhb that used to send candidates for invasive IQ and personality tests to a psychologist, but they don't exist anymore.

Many big corporates have psychometricians on staff. At least one even has a department dedicated to psychometric testing.

There's plenty of demand for skilled developers so I don't understand why people put themselves through the humiliation. I expect that a lot of skilled people self-select out of these sorts of psychometric processes if they can, to the detriment of potential employers.

I also wouldn't be surprised if many of the tests contain an element of uncorrected racial/cultural bias, and the psychometric industry has been exploiting the inability of the government to enforce the law (Employment Equity Act), which makes discriminatory testing illegal.

"I also wouldn't be surprised if many of the tests contain an element of uncorrected racial/cultural bias, and the psychometric industry has been exploiting the inability of the government to enforce the law (Employment Equity Act), which makes discriminatory testing illegal."

Bingo! The way it actually works is you organize everything with the assumption that applicants will fail 20% of tests. A different failure mode each time, but the odds are excellent if you give an applicant ten tests, and they fail 1 in 5, every applicant will fail at least one. Then you remove all the undesirables (skin color, sexuality, that kind of thing) and declare the fact that the bosses nephew being the only guy to fail the 360 interview with the janitor turns out to be not relevant, so lets hire him.

In the original article the only reason the 1% test result mattered In That Particular Case is the HR person didn't like that asian's nationality, or race, or religion, or something like that. Guarantee if I was the candidate it would be swept under the rug (unless the HR lady hates me because of my race, politics, religion, of course)

"I also wouldn't be surprised if many of the tests contain an element of uncorrected racial/cultural bias, and the psychometric industry has been exploiting the inability of the government to enforce the law (Employment Equity Act), which makes discriminatory testing illegal."

Why would the psychometric industry want to exploit such a lack of enforcement by vending a discriminatory test? Do you think their customers are interested in using tests that give bogus results?

Perhaps I was unclear. I don't think that they deliberately bias the tests, I do think that they don't rigorously validate the tests to prove that they are non-discriminatory, perhaps because of laziness, or because they lack the statistical know-how.

Section 8 of the Employment Equity Act: “Psychological testing and other similar assessments of an employee are prohibited unless the test or assessment being used— a) has been scientifically shown to be valid and reliable; b) can be applied fairly to all employees; and c) is not biased against any employee or group."