Tailor a separate resume for each role: identify the posting’s most important requirements, match them to skills you can support with evidence, and use the employer’s terminology naturally in your skills section and accomplishment bullets. Keywords help make relevant experience easier to find; they should never make your resume claim experience you do not have.
How to identify the right keywords in a job description
Start with the full posting rather than a generic list of popular resume terms. Read the responsibilities and qualifications, noting the role title, required and preferred qualifications, tools, methods, and skills mentioned more than once. UT Austin’s Applicant Tracking Systems guidance recommends paying attention to how duties and qualifications are phrased.
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Make a short priority list. Put required qualifications and skills central to the day-to-day work first. Repetition can indicate emphasis, but a frequently used word is not automatically a keyword you should include: it still has to describe your experience accurately.
Match each term to evidence you can support
Before editing, sort the important terms into three groups:
#1 Best Overall
- Direct match: You have the skill, tool, credential, or responsibility described.
- Close equivalent: Your experience is relevant, but you used different terminology or a comparable method. Explain the connection honestly rather than implying identical experience.
- Unsupported: You do not have the qualification or experience. Leave it out, even if the posting emphasizes it.
The University of Pennsylvania Career Services recommends adding relevant job-description skills accurately, not merely copying requirements; its example includes the phrase “leadership experience” (Optimizing Your Resume for AI Scanners, 2024-10-08). Keep job titles, dates, scope, and outcomes true to your history. A job duty in the posting is not evidence that you performed that duty.
Put keywords where they make your experience clearer
Use a skills section for concise, relevant terms
Include genuine hard skills, methods, and tools that matter to the role. Use the posting’s exact wording when it accurately describes what you know; when it does not, use the truthful name for your skill and explain an equivalent if it helps the reader understand the match.
Show important skills in experience or project bullets
Back up high-priority terms with relevant responsibilities, projects, or outcomes. For example, if a posting asks for a tool you have used, a bullet can name the tool and explain what you used it to do. The Queensborough Community College Career Services Resume Guidebook advises describing a keyword in context; a disconnected list alone does not show how you used the skill.
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Reorder or revise relevant bullets so the most applicable evidence is easy to spot. Keep the meaning and results intact, and write in your own voice. Avoid repeating the same term unnaturally or adding a block of keywords with no supporting context.
Keep a master resume and tailor a copy for every application
Maintain a master resume with your complete, accurate work history, skills, and projects. For each application, save a separate version with a clear filename for the employer and role. Tailor that copy by selecting and ordering the most relevant evidence, rather than rewriting your history or relying on one generic resume for every posting. UT Austin recommends creating a new version for each position (Applicant Tracking Systems).
Keep the document easy to parse and easy to read
Use straightforward formatting and an organization a person can skim. UT Austin recommends chronological experience organization and cautions that tables, columns, graphics, and objects may not be read accurately by an ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems). This is general guidance, not a guarantee about every system; employers use different products and processes.
Before sending the file, check that headings and dates are consistent, the tailored version still reads naturally, and the text remains intelligible when copied into plain text. The goal is both clear evidence for a human reader and relevant wording a system may be able to identify.
Should you use a resume keyword scanner?
You can compare the resume and posting manually in a word processor, or supplement that review with a scanner. Jobscan describes a tool that accepts resume and job-description text and reports matching or missing terms (Applicant Tracking Systems: Everything You Need to Know). That is the vendor’s feature description, not independent evidence that its report predicts an employer’s ranking or hiring decision.
Use any report as an editing checklist: inspect each suggested term, add it only if it is accurate and useful in context, and ignore suggestions that make the resume less truthful or readable. Scanner scores are not established as standardized across vendors or equivalent to an employer’s ATS score. A match report is not a promise of an interview.
Quick Recap
Final review before you apply
- Does the resume reflect the actual requirements and responsibilities in this specific posting?
- Are its most important matching skills supported by experience, projects, or another accurate example?
- Are close equivalents explained honestly, with unsupported qualifications omitted?
- Are the relevant terms placed naturally in the skills section and evidence-bearing bullets?
- Is the document readable, consistent, and saved as the correct role-specific version?
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