#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use feature 'say';

my @sentences = ('I am searching for a word',
                 'What are you searching for?',
                 'Today I have been searching for a new job',
                );

my $query = 'searching';    # Not @query, it is a scalar, not an array.

say for map $_->[1],
    sort { $a->[0] cmp $b->[0] }
    map { /(\w+)\s+searching/; [$1, $_] }
    @sentences;