One of the most important things to remember in Pathfinder and other 3.x fantasy games is that humanoid traces such as goblins, orcs, gnolls, kobolds, and others do not possess racial hit dice - they are full characters. The monsters in Pathfinder Bestiary 1 are typically "warrior level one" versions of the monster, and using them straight does a disservice to the challenge level and interest of your game.
To be fair, you need to include a range of levels and classes in your encounter, and this includes specialists, support classes, and casters. If you have Hero Lab it takes just a couple minutes to create a kobold shaman and kit him out with a basic spell list. An encounter with six kobolds is one thing, but three kobold warriors, a kobold shaman, and two kobold rangers is quite another, and in fact, much more interesting and memorable.
Let's give those kobold rangers masterwork shortbows and weak-poison tipped arrows? Great idea. Let's give the warriors caltrops and have them toss those under the character's feet? Even better. Have the shaman try to blind characters and have them step on the spikes? Fun. Even if those special attacks and pieces of gear never amount to anything, when the players remember back to those crafty kobolds that tried all sorts of silly tricks as something cool and memorable.
The six by-the-book kobolds with no armor and shortswords? Bland and uninteresting, and a disservice to your masterpiece of an adventure. The care you put into encounter creation shows your attention to detail and crafting your adventure. I know it takes a bit of work, and there is probably a need for pregens, but if you give yourself a rule "never use a monster straight from the book" - you will be in a lot better place when you are at the table with players.
Plus, from my experience, players love that attention to detail. Anybody can defeat stock by-the-book monsters, and in fact, many-many people do every day. That's what everybody does, so why follow the crowd? This is your game, the time your players are spending with you is special, so show them some love and customize your humanoid monsters with all the equipment, classes, feats, and spells that players use. Pull out your bag of "dirty tricks" and come up with some memorable attack combos for each encounter.
You could go even further, and customize most every monster, especially the intelligent ones. This is very fun, and it gives your campaign world a sense of difference and wonder where a wyrmling green dragon can have a couple ranger levels, adding a natural weapon feat for the claws to up damage, a favored terrain of the forest for stealth and tracking, some ranger powers and possibly an animal companion, and you have turned a stock monster into something very cool and interesting. Again, the capability of makes Hero Lab an incredible tool and worth investing in to increase your enjoyment of the game.
It turns the mundane monsters into the awesome, and gives you a whole new perspective on Pathfinder's character builds and flexibility. Yes, you can and should use class levels for monsters, and doing so customizes and "powers up" your game. It lets you put incredible creativity into your game, and makes every one of your encounters memorable and cool for your players.
Don't be by-the-book, be awesome.
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