Search in plain English, and find the people boolean cannot see.
Describe who you need the way you would to a colleague. Signals searches everything on the record, not only the fields somebody remembered to fill in.
What it is
Search in plain English means describing the person you need in ordinary words rather than building a boolean string. Signals searches the whole record, including what was said on calls and in messages, not only the fields that were typed in. It reads recruitment meaning, so senior in banking is not treated the same as senior at a startup, and it returns people rather than documents.
The problem
A boolean string can only match what somebody typed into a field. If a candidate mentioned on a call that they had spent two years on payments infrastructure, and nobody added it to their profile, that candidate does not exist to the search. What was said is already on the record, so the gap is not in what your agency knows, it is in what the query can reach. Most agencies have twenty thousand people they cannot find, so they go back to job boards and pay again for reach they already own. The database you already have is usually larger than the one you can actually use.
How it works
Describe who you need
Ordinary words, the way you would say it to a colleague. No operators, no nested brackets, no field names to remember.
It searches everything, not just the fields
Profiles, CVs, notes, calls and messages. A skill mentioned once on a call three months ago counts the same as one typed into a field.
It reads recruitment meaning
Senior in banking is not senior at a startup. Available means one thing for contract and another for permanent. The search understands the difference rather than matching the word.
You refine by saying what was wrong
Too junior, wrong sector, needs to be on a local package. Say it in words and the results change. Nothing has to be rebuilt from scratch.
What it looks like
Each person, and why they came back.
What it means on the desk
The candidate you already placed twice is not invisible because nobody updated their profile.
A new recruiter searches as well as your best one on their first day.
You look at your own database before you pay for reach a second time.
Where it fits
Ranked shortlists. What happens once you have the people and a live job to match them against.
Automatic capture. Why the record holds more than the fields somebody filled in.
Ask Signals. For questions about your desk, rather than finding people for a role.
Common questions
Every result shows why. Each person that comes back carries the line that surfaced them, a sentence from a call, a line in a CV, a field on the profile. You read the reason before you open the record, so relevance is something you check rather than something you take on trust. What does not belong can be said out loud and taken out.
Boolean still works. Nothing has been removed and nothing is going away. Operators, brackets and field searches behave the way they always have. Plain English is the faster default for most searches, not a replacement, and the two sit side by side. Recruiters who have spent years building strings keep using them, and switch when describing the person is quicker.
It tells you why. Rather than an empty page, Signals says the search is too narrow and shows which conditions are holding it back, the location, the seniority, the availability window. Loosen one of them in a sentence and the results come back. You are never left guessing which part of the description emptied the list.
All of it, not just fields. Profiles, CVs, call notes, meeting notes and messages sit on the record and all of it is searchable. A skill mentioned once on a call three months ago counts the same as one typed into a field, which is the point of searching the record rather than the form somebody had time to complete.
Scope follows your permissions. You search what your office is set up to see, and where an agency shares people across offices those people come back too, with the office shown on each result. Consultants in Singapore and Hong Kong get the scope their agency intends, set once in Many offices, one system.
Yes, all three. Availability, notice and rate carry weight on contract, so within four weeks is read as a date rather than a word. Executive search leans on history and sector depth, which sits in notes as often as in profiles. Permanent sits between the two. The search reads the desk it is used on.