One of the skills many sourcers I know pride themselves on most is their carefully honed and amazingly impressive skill in crafting an awesome boolean search string. If I see more than about four ands/ors and exclusions in a row, my head starts to spin, so I'm always awed when I witness the magic they can work to find that proverbial needle in the haystack.

But we seem to have a case of "when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

One of the most common themes I see now in HR is that recruiting is broken.

We need to change how we're searching for candidates, and a black-belt in boolean wizardry is no longer sufficient.

It's time to put as much energy into finding reasons to include candidates in your recruiting funnel as you have for excluding them.

It's time to stop looking for the nail, and instead, start looking for ways to expand your toolbox.

Rock out with your bad, boolean self, but don't forget to also start investigating talent networks, federated search and candidate profiles that give you visibility into candidates who may be your next star employee, but didn't follow the exact path you were envisioning to get there.

"Stop looking for perfection. Stop looking for the reflection of yo...

Stop looking for a nail. Instead, start looking to build the best house on the block.