Hiring Your Clone: This is one of the biggest mistakes of many entrepreneurs—Don’t hire people whose intellect cannot challenge your assumptions or business thoughts. Don’t hire people who are going to do the exact thing you can do. Don’t hire people who cannot think beyond what you say or tell them to do. Don’t hire people who can’t brainstorm with you on issues relating to the growth of your business. Always look to hire people who are smarter than you and can contribute significantly to the growth of your organisation.

Hiring just for the skills: Skills are very good, but it is not good enough. You need someone who besides talent or skills, understands corporate culture and business ethics. You need someone who can work in a team, not a lone ranger. You need someone who can meet deliverables and takes instructions from his or her superiors. You need someone who understands work habits. That is where few years of experience comes in. Always look for someone who has some years of experience working in a corporate organisation.

Not having a employment agreement: Quite a number of entrepreneurs hire without having an employment agreement with their employees. Having an employment agreement will protect your business, yourself and the employee you are hiring. This will also transparently give you a detailed idea of the expectations or what to expect from the person you are hiring. Always be mindful of this; don’t get into any transaction verbally, especially when you are hiring. Make sure you have a formal document of agreement that binds both your organisation and the employee for cordial relationship.

Hiring to train the employee: Yes, it is important that you expose your staff to corporate training, whether it is done in or outside the office environment. However, it is very wrong to hire people just to fill a need, and you are hoping to train them. Large corporations and medium scales businesses have the resources and luxury of time to train new hires for a period of time. For a small business, you don’t have such resource and time. So, you don’t need someone who is coming to learn on the game, you need someone who has the experience and skills for his or her position in your organisation. That way, you can quickly produce significant result that will generate revenue for your business.

Not Firing when necessary: Most entrepreneurs attach sentiment to firing an incompetent employee, and so they want to continue to manage such employee at the expenses of their businesses. It is a big mistake. When you notice someone is incompetent, fire such ASAP. If you don’t, you will eventually waste resources and also frustrate yourself. You must know how to fire and employ people quickly so you can quickly deal with whatever challenge your business is facing.