Resume Keywords: How to Find the Right Words to Beat the ATS

Your resume is the gateway to a new career and professional advancement. To ensure your resume puts your best foot forward, you’ll need to impress hiring managers and application filtering software, too. 

Today, approximately 98.4 percent of Fortune 500 companies use an applicant tracking system (ATS) and/or recruiting management system (RMS) to streamline their hiring process [1]. These systems track applicants at every stage of the hiring process, manage applicant pools, and filter applications using keywords.  

Resume keywords are the key to improving your application’s chances of being seen by an employer. Explore how the ATS and RMS comb resumes and learn tips for identifying the keywords that could help you land your next job.

What are keywords in a resume?

To use keywords appropriately on your resume, it is first important to understand the systems that scan it and how they do so. 

What are an ATS and RMS? 

An ATS is a workflow efficiency tool used by hiring managers to keep track of job applications across numerous platforms during every stage of the hiring process.

The ATS is often complemented by an RMS, which allows recruiters to manage hiring activities, such as creating talent pools and scheduling interviews. In effect, these systems help employers ease the burden of managing and sifting through large applicant pools through automation. 

How does a resume keyword reader work? 

Like an ATS/RMS, a resume keyword reader filters applicants by specified criteria, such as a specific credential or keyword. The system turns your resume into plain text to find this information and scans it for the stated criteria. Afterward, it compares your resume to other resumes and ranks it according to the search query. When this occurs, some resumes are highlighted, while others are effectively hidden. 

Unfortunately, it is not possible to know the exact criteria that a hiring manager will use to filter resumes. While some focus on specific skills like project management, others focus on specific credentials, such as a bachelor’s degree. Some might pick something else entirely. That’s where ATS resume keywords come in.

Why do you need ATS resume keywords?

Putting ATS keywords on your resume is important because these systems use them to rank your job application. 

Remember, the ATS/RMS turns your resume into plain text to scan it and identify keywords that match its search intent. In effect, the system simply reduces your resume to a collection of words and focuses only on keywords that match its criteria. 

Some common filters that recruiters use to rank applications include the following:

• Education 

• Qualifications

• Job title

• Technical skills 

Read more: How to Make a Resume for Your First Job (+ Template) 

How to add keywords in a resume

The original job posting itself is the best place to find the most important keywords to include on your resume. Typically, recruiters use job description wording to filter job applications. 

That said, don’t simply stuff your resume with keywords. Instead, it would help if you mirrored the phrasing in the job description to describe the skills and experience you possess naturally. Explore how you can do it yourself. 

Read more: How to Get a Job with No Experience: A Job Seeker’s Guide

1. Scan a job posting for keywords.

The first step is to look at a job listing that interests you and identify the skills and experience that match your own. To keep track of your matches, copy-paste the job description into a separate document and highlight it so you can easily reference it later.   

For example, consider the following qualifications from a real job listing advertising a data analyst position. To identify relevant keywords and phrases, the applicant might go through the job description and bold the skills and experience that match their own. 

(Note:  While this example only focuses on the qualifications section, you should do this for the entire job description. Often, employers include other key details elsewhere in a job posting.)  

Basic Qualifications:

• 3+ years of experience working with databases, writing SQL, Excel, and Salesforce

• Demonstrated experience synthesizing data and building reports

• Experience in a technology industry or comparable fast-paced industry

• Demonstrated experience in a commercial team focusing on clients/partner needs.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Statistics, Economics, Data Analytics, Business or related

• Experience with R, Python notebooks, and Google Sheets is a plus.

• Expertise in any or all of these areas is a huge plus: Technology (ex. computer science), Business (ex. marketing, finance), and Health (ex. patient care, pharma)

• Systems thinker: Can figure out how data flows today and how it should be configured to be most useful to business partners.

2. Divide keywords into skills and experience.

Now that you have identified the skills and experience in the job description that match your own, you should copy-paste them into a list organized by “work experience” and “skills.” The purpose here is to create a list that includes the exact phrasing used in the job description because the system will likely search for matching terms using the same language. 

For example, the data analyst from the last section might create a chart that looks like this: 

3. Tailor your resume. 

Once you have organized your work experience and skills, you can tailor your resume using the keywords you identified. During this phase, you want to update your resume to include the exact phrasing used in the job description to describe the skills and experience you already possess. 

For example, the data analyst applying to the above job might update their resume to emphasize the skills and experience matching the job description. 

Skills keywords

A good way to make skills-based keywords visible is to include them in the skills section of your resume. This section can be divided into technical skills (“hard skills”) and people skills (“soft skills”) to emphasize your suitability for the position. Prioritize your technical skill set on your resume because it is more likely to be searched and prioritized by the ATS/RMS than more abstract people skills like “teamwork.”

Experience keywords

A good way to emphasize your matching work experience is to use the key phrases you have already identified in your resume's “work experience” section. Remember, the purpose here is not to lie on your resume about the experience you don’t possess but to update your resume with phrasing that matches the job description. 

For example, the data analyst mentioned above might note that in one prior job, they “managed a commercial team with a focus on clients/partner needs” to help the ATS/RMS more easily match with them. 

Resume keywords elsewhere on your application.

In addition to the “work experience” and “skills” sections of your resume, you should also include keywords in your cover letter and resume summary. That said, use only keywords and phrases when they make sense rather than repeatedly or forcibly. Indiscriminate keyword stuffing can lead some systems to avoid your resume. 

For example, the data analyst from our example might write the following resume summary to emphasize their suitability for the position to the ATS/RMS: 

“Data analyst with a bachelor’s degree in business and 2+ years of experience working with databases, synthesizing data, building reports, and managing a commercial team focused on client/partner needs. Experience in SQL, Excel, Salesforce, and Python notebooks.”

Tip: Tailor your title. 

Occasionally, different businesses use different titles for the same position. If you are applying for a job that uses a different title for a position that is the same or similar to one you’ve held, then consider changing the title of your previous position to that of which you are applying. This could help the ATS/RMS better match with your resume.

For example, someone applying to be a “market manager” who was previously called a “community manager” in a similar position should consider changing their previous title to “market manager” to improve their chances of not being filtered out by the system. 

That said, don’t inflate your title to a position with responsibilities that you didn’t hold, such as changing your title from a “sales associate” to a “sales manager.”

4. Apply and repeat for other job postings. 

Once you have finished tailoring your resume and everything is in order, you only need to hit “submit” to apply. Congratulations!

When applying to other positions, repeat the process of identifying keywords based on job descriptions and tailoring each resume and cover letter to the respective positions. 

Learn more about building your resume on Coursera.

Using the right keywords is one way to make your resume stand out from other potential candidates. You might consider obtaining a Professional Certificate to get job-ready by building in-demand skills as you search for a new job. Coursera offers 4,000+ courses in a wide range of subjects offered by more than 200 world-class universities and organizations, such as Google, Stanford, and the University of Michigan.