Starting a business from scratch is going to leave you tired and frustrated; you will have to find someone who is going to stand by you through all ups and downs and be equally responsible for everything that goes wrong or right. Finding an immaculate co-founder will be the real test of your hiring skills. You will not be hiring someone but your capability of measuring people’s potential will be no less than a litmus test for you

You should never contemplate the potential of co-founder on the basis of educational qualification; take a dig into his personal life, try to understand his passion and contemplate the things he or she is good at. Here’s a list of things to see when you are looking for a co-founder:

• Ignore the Qualification but not the experience: One can be forced by parents to keep up engineering and pursue it for four long years even after being tremendously bad at it but one can always look for alternatives and create a career on his or her own. Engineers have always found one or the other way out. If you want an engineer to be a co-founder of your startup, let him or her prove their extra curricular activities.
• How good he is at something, he says he is good at: Measure him on the parameters he talks the most about. Find that one thing that he thinks he is good at and test his capabilities on the same. If he is really good at it then welcome him to your team or look for someone else. 

• Passion is important while confidence is contagious: never look for someone who is confident, look for someone who is passionate. Passion is something that coaxes people to push their limits while confidence can be developed by eating with confident people. Help them understand their passion and they will impress you with their confidence.

• Something that resonates with you: Finding a like-minded co-founder is important because the idea is going to remain same. You will have to see that your co-founder sees eye to eye with you. Do not give them opportunities so that they can resign and leave everything after a heated discussion.

• What he can contribute: never prefer degree to talent. Look for someone who is talented and has a vision instead of someone who has a degree but no vision. If you find someone who has a degree as well as the required passion and talent then never let them go, such people are no less than an asset.

 Life is going to throw a lot of challenges on you but finding a co-founder is going to be the toughest of all. If you are successful in finding that one person who is talented and has all the required traits then sooner or later you will taste success.