How to Find Keywords in a Job Description

Keywords are the specific terms an employer uses to describe the person they want to hire. Finding them is mostly careful reading: sort the posting's terms by type, note which ones are required, and notice which ones repeat. This guide walks through that process with an example posting, then covers where to put the keywords you have and what to do about the ones you don't.

What counts as a keyword in a job description?

A keyword is any specific term a recruiter might search for or look for while skimming: hard skills, tools, credentials, job titles and industry terms. Soft skills count too, but you prove them differently.

Hard skills, tools and credentials are the easiest terms to search for and check, because they're specific. Soft skills like "communication" are worth noting, but listing them as single words carries little weight. Show them in a bullet instead, such as presenting results to non-technical leaders.

How do you find keywords, step by step?

Strip the posting down to its requirements, highlight every specific term, and sort what you find. Once you've done it a few times, it takes only a few minutes per posting.

1. Paste the posting into a document and delete the parts that aren't about the job: company boilerplate, benefits and legal statements.
2. Highlight every specific term: tools, methods, credentials, titles and industry phrases. Skip generic words like "dynamic" or "fast-paced."
3. Sort the terms into the five types above.
4. Mark each term required or preferred, using the section headings and wording (more on this below).
5. Note repeats and placement: which terms show up more than once, or in the title and opening lines.
6. Compare against your resume: mark each term "have it," "have something close" or "don't have it."

Here's a short example posting from a fictional company:

Sorting it gives you this:

How do you tell required from preferred keywords?

Use the section labels and the wording. Headings like "Requirements," "Must have" or "What you'll need" signal required items, while "Nice to have," "Bonus" or "Preferred" signal extras.

The wording helps too. "Must," "strong," "proven" and "X+ years" point to requirements. "Familiarity with," "exposure to" and "a plus" point to preferences.

Required keywords you have should be easy to spot, ideally in more than one place on your resume. Preferred ones are worth including when they're true, but missing a few is normal. Postings often describe an ideal candidate, not a minimum.

Why do repeated terms and their placement matter?

Repetition and position are the employer telling you what matters most. A term in the job title, the opening paragraph and again in the requirements is a priority; a term mentioned once near the bottom usually isn't.

In the example, SQL, Tableau or Power BI, and stakeholder communication each appear in both the duties and the requirements. Those are the ones to prove first, in the top bullets of your most recent relevant job. Claims data is labeled nice to have, but it's also in the very first sentence, which suggests it matters more than the label implies.

How should you handle synonyms and acronyms?

Write the full term followed by the acronym the first time, such as "Amazon Web Services (AWS)," then use whichever form the posting uses. That way a search for either version finds you, and any reader understands both.

Some applicant tracking systems match terms fairly literally, so "CPA" and "Certified Public Accountant" may not be treated as the same thing. A few common pairs:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Certified Public Accountant (CPA)
• Project Management Professional (PMP)
• Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD)

Synonyms work the same way. If the posting says "clients" and your resume says "customers," or it says "stakeholder management" and you wrote "kept department heads informed," switch to their term when it describes the same work. For more on how these systems handle your file, read how applicant tracking systems read resumes.

Where should you put keywords on your resume?

Put them in three places: your skills section, your experience bullets and your summary. A keyword inside a bullet, with context showing how you used it, is more convincing than the same word in a list.

• Skills section: list the tools, hard skills and credentials you genuinely have, with the posting's priorities first.
• Experience bullets: use the most important terms where the work happened. "Wrote SQL queries and built Tableau dashboards that cut weekly reporting from a full day to two hours" proves two keywords at once.
• Summary or headline: name the target role and two or three of your strongest matching skills.

There's no magic number of keywords. Aim to cover every required term you genuinely have at least once, prove the top priorities in bullets, and add preferred terms when they're true.

Keep keywords in plain, selectable text under standard section headings. Text inside images or graphics may not be read at all. Our guide to ATS-friendly resume formatting covers layout, and you can browse common terms in our resume keywords by role.

Why do keyword stuffing and hidden text backfire?

Because a person reads your resume after any software does. Stuffing and hidden text are easy to spot, and they signal that you're trying to game the process instead of showing your fit.

• Stuffing a skills section with every term from the posting, or forcing a keyword into every bullet, makes the resume hard to read and buries your real results.
• Hidden text, such as keywords in white font, often defeats itself. Applicant tracking systems typically extract the plain text of your resume, which drops font color, so the "hidden" words can appear in the version a recruiter sees.
• Copying the job description into your resume tells the reader nothing about you, and recruiters recognize their own posting.
• Claiming skills you don't have might get past a filter, but it falls apart in the interview or a skills test.

What should you do about keywords you don't have?

Leave them off, and don't word your resume to suggest you have them. Then decide how to handle the gap honestly.

• Something close: if the posting asks for Tableau and you use Looker, list Looker. The reader can judge how transferable it is. Don't write "Tableau" unless you've used it.
• Some exposure: if you've used the skill in a course or side project, say so in context, such as a projects entry that names the tool and what you built.
• A preferred gap: apply anyway and, if it's relevant, mention in your cover letter how you're learning it.
• A required gap: if you're missing one core requirement, apply and address it directly. If you're missing several, the role may be a stretch for now.

StructuredCV's tailoring follows the same rule by default: it only lists skills from your own Fact Bank and shows missing requirements as gaps, so you see what's missing without anything being added for you. Once you have your keyword list, use it to tailor your resume to the job description.