Resume Keywords: How to Find the Right Ones for Each Job
Which keywords to use in your resume, where to find them in the job posting, where to place them, and how to avoid keyword stuffing — with concrete examples.
Full guide: ATS Resume Builder
Recruiters don't read every resume in full. They search, scan and filter — and the words they search for come straight from the job description. If your resume describes the right experience in different words, it can be overlooked by software and people alike.
This guide explains which keywords matter, how to find them in a job posting, where to put them, and how to do it without turning your resume into a list of buzzwords.
What counts as a resume keyword
A keyword is a term that identifies a qualification precisely. The most useful categories are:
- Job titles: "Account Executive", "Data Analyst", "Office Manager".
- Hard skills and methods: "financial modelling", "SEO", "Agile", "budget forecasting".
- Tools and software: "Salesforce", "Excel (pivot tables)", "Figma", "SAP".
- Certifications and degrees: "PMP", "CPA", "Bachelor's in Computer Science".
- Languages, with a level: "Dutch (C1)".
- Domain vocabulary: "B2B SaaS", "supply chain", "GDPR compliance".
Soft skills like "team player" or "communicative" are rarely searched for and convince no one on their own. Show them through results instead.
Where to find keywords: the job posting first
Read the posting with a highlighter. Here is an illustrative excerpt for a Data Analyst role, with the keywords extracted:
"You will build dashboards in Power BI, write SQL queries against our data warehouse, and present insights to stakeholders. You have 2+ years of experience in data analysis, strong Excel skills, and ideally some Python."
Keywords: Power BI, dashboards, SQL, data warehouse, stakeholder communication, data analysis, Excel — plus Python as a nice-to-have.
Pay special attention to terms in the requirements, terms that appear more than once, and the exact job title. Looking at three or four similar postings helps you see which terms are standard for the role. Our guide on how to analyze a job posting explains how to separate must-haves from nice-to-haves.
Where to place keywords in your resume
- Headline or title: use the target job title if it matches your experience.
- Summary: two or three of the most important skills for the role.
- Skills section: the tools and methods you master, named exactly.
- Experience bullet points: the most convincing place, because the keyword comes with proof.
Compare a skills list with a bullet point:
Skills: SQL, Power BI
→ "Built 6 Power BI dashboards from SQL queries on the sales data warehouse, used weekly by the regional sales team."
The second version contains the same keywords and answers the recruiter's real question: what did you do with them?
Exact wording, acronyms and variants
Search is often literal. A few habits make you findable whichever term the recruiter uses:
- Write acronyms in full once: "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)", "Customer Relationship Management (CRM)".
- Use the posting's version of a term when both are accurate: "stakeholder management" rather than "working with other departments".
- Keep official names of tools and certifications: "Microsoft Excel", "Google Ads", "PRINCE2".
What not to do
- Keyword stuffing: repeating terms or listing every buzzword. People read your resume after the search.
- Hidden text, such as white keywords on a white background. Many ATS display the extracted text to recruiters, where hidden words become visible.
- Claiming skills you don't have. It may get you an interview, then fail you in it.
- Copying sentences from the posting. Use its vocabulary, not its paragraphs.
Check which keywords are missing
Manually, list the posting's keywords in one column and tick each one that appears in your resume. For each missing term, ask: do I have this? If yes, add it where it naturally belongs. If not, leave it out — and consider addressing the gap in your cover letter.
CVixeo's job description matching automates this step: it extracts the required skills and keywords from the posting, compares them with your CV and lists what wasn't found. It works across English, French and Dutch, so a Dutch posting can be compared with an English CV.
Conclusion
Good keywords are not tricks; they are precise names for what you can do. Take them from the posting, place them where they come with evidence, and keep the wording honest. Then repeat the comparison for every application — the right keywords for one job are rarely exactly the right ones for the next.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How many keywords should a resume contain?
There is no ideal number. Aim to cover every requirement in the posting that you genuinely meet, each in the posting's wording, without repeating terms unnaturally.
Should I include soft skills as keywords?
Only when the posting stresses them, and preferably shown through an example ("led weekly meetings with 3 departments") rather than as a standalone word.
Are keywords the same for every ATS?
The keywords come from the job and the recruiter's search, not from the software. That's why they change with every posting.
Can I use keywords from the job posting word for word?
Yes for single terms and skill names when they're accurate. Don't copy whole sentences or describe experience you don't have.
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