A concern raised by practitioners in the use of personality inventories is the potential impact of socially desirable responding on selection decisions. The most popular strategy to address response distortion is the inclusion of social desirability scales in personality inventories. In applied settings these scales are used to eliminate sources of bias or systematic error that are not relevant to the measured attribute, to identify applicants who are deliberately presenting themselves in a positive manner, to adjust personality scale scores to compensate for socially desirable responding and to flag potentially invalid personality profiles. This presentation reports on a study that examined three social desirability scales across different personality instruments frequently used in South Africa (16PF-5, BarOn EQ-i and OPQ) utilising race and language as the basis for comparison (combined sample of 12 502 job applicants and incumbents). A cross-sectional research design was employed using secondary data.  The study showed that the psychometric properties of the different social desirability scales are unsatisfactory with low reliability coefficients reported across race and language groups. The social desirability scales however measured a universal construct dominated by a one-factor solution measuring impression management. There are furthermore items within the different scales that do not function equivalently across race and language groups. Based on the evidence it is not justified to make decisions about individuals on the basis of scores obtained on these scales. The Rasch analysis also detected cross-cultural differences in the psychological meaning of some items, which may render it unsafe to compare the groups quantitatively or to make universal corrections. The examination of measurement equivalence therefore suggests that it may be unsafe to use the social desirability scales employed in this study in cross-cultural settings. The implication for research and practice are discussed.