The Cognitive
Boolean is dead.
Write one plain sentence. Get the people your search string never found.
Why strings miss your best people
A string only finds people who typed your words. Five ways that goes wrong, with the person each one loses.
1. Synonyms you didn't think of
Lost: the "Pay & Benefits Officer" who runs a 900-person multi-state payroll every two weeks. Also lost: "Payroll Analyst", "Payroll Coordinator", "Payroll Lead". Each company names the job its own way.
2. AND chains that zero out
Every AND is one more word a person must have typed. The planner who wrote "IBP" instead of "S&OP", or "forecasting" instead of "demand planning", drops out. Five ANDs can leave you with a handful of people, or none.
3. NOT that removes good people
Lost: the senior designer whose summary says "moved in-house from an agency in 2021", and the lead who "mentors two interns". NOT matches any mention of the word, not only the thing you meant to exclude.
4. Keyword-stuffers rank top
Top of the list: a profile with 60 skills pasted in a row, every keyword present, no line about what they ran. Further down: the engineer who wrote "carried the pager for the payments platform and cut deploy time from an hour to eight minutes" and listed four skills.
5. Profiles that describe the work without the keyword
Lost: a "Finance Manager" who "closes the books monthly for a 40-person subsidiary, owns the audit and the board pack". That is a controller. The title and the phrase you searched never appear.
- Paste no string. Type the role in one sentence: "Payroll specialist who runs multi-state US payroll on ADP, near Tampa."
- Open the Strong matches first. Each one says why it fits, even when their title differs from yours.
The 5-line brief that replaces them
Write these five lines before you search. Each line has one job.
- Role + levelThe title most people would use, plus the level: "Staff", "Senior", "first-line manager", "newly qualified".
- The work in one sentenceWhat they will do in the first year, in verbs. "Owns the design of our billing services and leads two engineers."
- Must-haves, max 3Things you would reject a strong person for missing. Licences, a kind of work done, a scale handled.
- Nice-to-haves, in orderMost wanted first. These sort the list. They never remove anyone.
- Location + avoidCity and how far (on-site, hybrid, remote in a country). Then who you do not want: employers, levels or backgrounds.
Filled example
The same brief as one sentence
Line rules
- Use the title the market uses, not your internal one. "Member Success Lead" becomes "Customer Success Manager".
- Write work, not adjectives. "Self-starter" and "passionate" add nothing.
- One city per brief. If you hire in two, run two briefs.
- Keep salary out. It does not describe the person.
- Paste the five lines as they are, or type the one-sentence version. Both work.
- Put the city and the avoid line in the same box. No separate fields to set.
Must-haves vs. nice-to-haves
Hiring managers hand over seven to twelve requirements. Sort them with these rules before you search.
The sorting rules
- The reject test. Ask: "If someone matched everything else, would you still say no without this?" Yes means must-have. Anything else is nice-to-have.
- Legal and licence items are always must-haves. Active RN licence, a journeyman electrician card, a pharmacist registration, right to work, a security clearance.
- Years are never must-haves. Rewrite "8+ years" as the work that proves it: "has run a month-end close alone".
- Software names are nice-to-haves unless the person must be productive in week one with no ramp-up. "NetSuite" is usually nice. "Epic charting in an ICU" can be a must.
- Proxies get replaced. "Big 4 background" becomes "has prepared complex corporate returns". "Top school" becomes the skill the manager hopes it signals.
- Three is the cap. If five survive the reject test, ask the manager to rank them. Top three stay. The rest go to the top of the nice list in that order.
- Dealbreakers go in the avoid line. "No staffing agencies" is an avoid, not a negative must-have.
- Location is a must-have only for on-site roles. For hybrid, write the commute you accept.
The question to ask the hiring manager
Worked example: Registered Nurse, ICU, Phoenix
| MANAGER SAID | SORTED AS |
|---|---|
| Active Arizona RN licence or compact | Must-have (licence) |
| 2+ years ICU | Must-have, rewritten: "currently works ICU or step-down" |
| Can take night shifts | Must-have (reject test passed) |
| CCRN | Nice-to-have, first |
| Epic charting | Nice-to-have, second |
| BSN | Nice-to-have, third |
| Bilingual Spanish | Nice-to-have, fourth |
| "No travel nurses" | Avoid line |
- Type the must-haves as "must have", and the rest as "nice to have, in this order".
- If a must-have turns out too strict, type the change: "move CCRN to nice-to-have" and search again.
12 before & after searches
Left: a string a recruiter would really write. Right: the brief that replaces it, with the work, the order of preference and who to avoid.
Account Executive, mid-market · Denver
HR Business Partner · Manchester
DevOps / SRE · Austin
Mechanical Design Engineer · Stuttgart
Customer Success Manager · Toronto
Data Analyst · Dublin
Electrician, commercial · Phoenix
Pharmacist · Birmingham, UK
Tax Senior · Dallas
Security Analyst, SOC · Raleigh
Paralegal · Boston
Warehouse Operations Manager · Indianapolis
- Take any right-hand brief, change the city, and type it as your search.
- Keep your old string as a check: open a few Strong matches and see which ones it would have missed.
Reading results in 10 minutes
Run this routine on every new list. Tick each step as you go.
- 0 to 3 min
- 3 to 5 min
- 5 to 7 min
- 7 to 9 min
- 9 to 10 min
If this, change that (one change at a time)
| YOU SEE | TYPE THIS CHANGE |
|---|---|
| Right skills, wrong level | "Only people already at senior level, leading others" |
| Too few Strong matches | "Move Kinaxis to nice-to-have" |
| Right work, wrong industry | "Avoid consulting firms; prefer manufacturers" |
| Good people, too far away | "Also include people within an hour of Leeds" |
| Many job-hoppers | "Prefer people with 2+ years in their current role" |
- Open the Strong matches first. Each one says why it fits.
- Click shortlist or pass on each person as you read.
- Type your change in the search box and search again. Ask for more people when the list runs out.
- Get email and phone for your shortlist, or send them to your ATS if it is connected.
Plain-English briefs for 20 roles
Copy one, change the city and the must-haves to your role, then search.
Staff backend engineer near Denver who has built high-volume payment or ledger systems in Go or Java and led a major redesign; fintech a plus; avoid agencies.
Senior product designer in Lisbon who has shipped end-to-end flows for a B2B web app and works from research to final Figma files; design-system work a plus.
Mid-market AE in Denver who closes their own software deals with companies of 200 to 2,000 staff; full-cycle a must; avoid meeting-booking-only roles.
RN with an active Arizona or compact licence, currently working ICU or step-down, open to nights, Phoenix area; CCRN then Epic a plus; avoid travel-only contracts.
Financial controller near Bristol who runs the month-end close and the year-end audit for a business of 50 to 300 staff; qualified ACA, ACCA or CIMA; NetSuite a plus.
HR business partner near Manchester who supports leaders of 300+ staff and has run a restructure; CIPD Level 7 a plus; avoid recruitment-only roles.
Senior SRE in Austin who has carried the pager for a customer-facing system and runs Kubernetes on AWS with Terraform; avoid IT support titles.
Payroll specialist near Tampa who runs multi-state US payroll end to end for 500+ employees; ADP or UKG; year-end W-2 work a must.
Supply chain planner in or near Rotterdam who owns demand and supply plans for manufactured goods and joins the monthly S&OP; SAP a must; Dutch and English.
Mechanical design engineer near Stuttgart who takes automotive parts from CAD to production release; GD&T a must; CATIA preferred; German speaker.
CSM in Toronto who owns renewals for a book of B2B software accounts; owning a renewal number a must; avoid support-desk roles.
Data analyst in Dublin who writes their own SQL and builds dashboards business teams use weekly; Python a plus; e-commerce preferred.
Licensed journeyman electrician in Phoenix on commercial new-build or tenant improvement jobs; reads prints and bends conduit; avoid residential-only.
GPhC-registered community pharmacist within 30 minutes of Birmingham who runs a dispensary day to day; independent prescriber a plus; avoid locum-only histories.
Tax senior in Dallas from public accounting who prepares and reviews partnership and corporate returns; CPA or CPA-eligible a must; real-estate clients a plus.
In-house technical recruiter in Berlin who has filled engineering roles end to end at a product company; English a must, German a plus; avoid agency-only careers.
B2B marketing manager in Amsterdam who has run demand campaigns for a software company and reports on sales-qualified leads; HubSpot a plus; avoid consumer-only brands.
Tier 2 SOC analyst near Raleigh who triages alerts and works incidents to close; Splunk or Sentinel preferred; avoid help-desk-only experience.
Litigation paralegal in Boston who has handled discovery and trial prep at a law firm; Relativity a plus; avoid in-house corporate-only paralegals.
Warehouse operations manager in Indianapolis running a multi-shift distribution centre of 100+ staff; owns safety and throughput; 3PL a plus.
- Click Copy, paste the brief into the search box, change the city, and search.
- From your shortlist, invite the people you pick to an AI interview. They book their own time, and you get the recording, transcript and scores.
Run your next search as a sentence
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