About five years into my career, I started to notice something. No matter the industry or even the country, employers worldwide tend to make the same, costly hiring mistakes time after time after time. Now, 30-plus years later, I regret to report that nothing's changed much.

Read on to see if you have fallen into any of the following, common hiring traps:

10. You don't have a clear picture of what you need to hire. (You have not spelled out the specific capacities, attitudes, personality traits, skills and talents required.)

9. You look for people who are looking for a job instead of all the proven folks who are busy working and open to a new opportunity.

8. You hire the employees you need instead of the employees you want. (You're desperate to put a body, any body, in the position rather than maintaining your hiring standards.)

7. You make it difficult for the best people to get into your hiring system for an interview because it has been designed to make it easy for you instead of easy for the applicant.

6. You don't realize that every step in the hiring process is a test. If the application form is not filled out completely, the applicant failed the "follows instructions" test. (The person who is late for the interview, just failed the "dependability" test.)

5. You set the applicant up to tell you what you want to hear by sharing all the details about the job and exactly the kind of person you're looking for at the beginning of the interview.

4. During the interview, you do most of the talking. (No one ever learns anything while they are speaking.)

3. You use the same, canned interview questions everyone else does, and the applicant responds with the canned answers that are liberally plastered all over the internet.

2. You don't use your best people to help screen applicants because "they are too busy working on other things." (Nothing's more important than who gets hired.)

1. Your managers don't realize how critical it is to the success of your organization to ensure you hire only STAR employees (Self-motivated, Talented, Accountable, Responsible and Stable).