How to find the keywords in a job description

Every job posting is a list of what an employer wants, written in the words they chose. Your resume is a list of what you have done, written in the words you happened to use. Finding the keywords in a posting is the step that connects the two, and it is a skill you can learn in an afternoon.

This guide walks through a method you can repeat for any role, in any field, with a pencil or a highlighter. It includes one long worked example, a made-up posting for a medical scheduling job, so you can see every decision from the first read to the finished resume lines. If you want the reasoning behind tailoring first, start with why tailor a resume for each job.

What counts as a keyword

A keyword is any word or phrase in a posting that names something the employer wants to see. The word "keyword" makes it sound technical, but in practice it is a noun phrase: a skill, a tool, a duty, a credential or a title. Most postings contain a few dozen, and they fall into a handful of types.

The first four types are the ones that matter most to a person searching a database of applicants, because they are specific. The last two matter more to a human reader, who wants to see that you understand what the job is for.

Why finding them is worth the time

Three things happen to your resume after you apply, and keywords play a part in each.

1. A recruiter may search the pool of applicants in their system for a skill or a title, the same way you search your email. If your resume uses a different word for the same thing, a search for the posting's word may not show you.
2. A hiring manager skims. Skimming means looking for the few terms that signal "this person has done this before". Terms that match the posting are easy to spot. Terms that do not are not.
3. Some employers use screening questions or filters. A required credential or a required number of years is often the thing they filter on, and both are keywords.

How a particular company's system ranks or filters applications is not public, and it varies from one employer to the next. Treat keywords as a way to be easy to find and easy to understand. They are not a trick, and no resume is guaranteed to pass anything. For a plain-language look at what these systems do, see what is an ATS.

The method in six steps

1. 1

   Read it once

   The whole posting, top to bottom, before you mark anything.

2. 2

   Mark candidates

   Underline every skill, tool, duty, credential and title.

3. 3

   Count repeats

   Tally anything that appears more than once.

4. 4

   Sort by importance

   Must-have, nice-to-have or background.

5. 5

   Match to proof

   Find an example in your history for each must-have.

6. 6

   Place them

   Put each one where it is true and easy to see.

Two rules apply to every step. First, work from the whole posting, including the duties and the company description, because they contain keywords the requirements list leaves out. Second, write down only what the posting says. Do not add terms you think the employer would like.

If you have a posting open now, paste it into the free keyword finder below. It does steps 2 to 4 for you, and steps 5 and 6 stay yours.

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A worked example, start to finish

Here is a made-up posting for a scheduling job at a medical group. Read it once the way you would read any posting, then follow the next sections to see how the keywords come out of it. The highlighted phrases are the candidates a first pass would mark.

Job posting (made up for this guide)

Scheduling Coordinator, Cedar Valley Family Health

Cedar Valley Family Health is looking for a Scheduling Coordinator to manage appointment scheduling across our four clinics. You will keep provider calendars full, reduce no-shows, and be the first point of contact for patients by phone and in person.

What you will do

• Schedule, reschedule and confirm patient appointments using our EHR system
• Manage provider calendars across four clinic locations
• Verify insurance information and collect copays at check-in
• Handle a high volume of phone calls with professionalism and empathy
• Send appointment reminders and follow up on missed appointments to reduce no-shows
• Maintain strict patient confidentiality and follow HIPAA guidelines

What we are looking for

• 2+ years of scheduling or front desk experience, preferably in a medical office
• Experience with an EHR or practice management system (Epic or similar a plus)
• Strong phone and communication skills; bilingual English/Spanish a plus
• Comfortable with Microsoft Outlook and Excel
• High school diploma or equivalent; medical terminology knowledge preferred

Step 1: read it once

Read the posting straight through without a pen. You are trying to answer one question: what is this job, in a sentence? Here the answer is that someone keeps a medical group's calendars full and gets patients in the door without losing the paperwork. Everything you mark next should serve that sentence.

Step 2: mark the candidates

Go through again and underline every noun phrase that names a skill, tool, duty, credential, title or standard. Do not judge yet. In the example that gives roughly a dozen candidates, shown highlighted above.

Some candidates appear in two forms. "Appointment scheduling" in the opening paragraph and "schedule, reschedule and confirm patient appointments" in the duties are the same keyword. "EHR system" and "practice management system" are close relatives. Group them as you go.

Step 3: count the repeats

Repetition is the cheapest signal in a posting. An employer who mentions something three times is telling you it dominates the job. A tally for the example:

Scheduling, phones and no-shows are what this job is about. A resume for this role that buries all three would be a poor fit no matter how good the rest of it is.

Step 4: sort by importance

Repeats are one signal. The words around a keyword are another. Postings use a small vocabulary to say how much they care.

Applying that to the example gives three tiers.

Notice that "Epic or similar a plus" splits in two. The category, an EHR or practice management system, is a must-have. The brand name is a bonus. That distinction shows up often: a posting names a famous product, and what it really needs is someone who has used that kind of product.

Step 5: match each must-have to proof

Now turn to your own history. For each must-have, write down one real example. Here is the history of Jordan Ellis, a made-up applicant, three years at a dental office front desk and two before that at a hotel:

This is the table that tells you what the resume should say. Everything marked "strong" should appear in the resume, in words close to the posting's. The "partial" row needs one honest sentence, and the "be careful" row needs a careful word. You can describe Spanish as conversational and offer to demonstrate. You cannot list it as fluent.

Step 6: place the keywords

Each keyword has a natural home. Put it where it is true, and where a reader's eye will land.

Header

Maya Torres

Summary

Skills

Experience

Experience

Education

• 1Summary: one or two of the core must-haves in the first sentence, so the reader knows the fit before they reach the jobs.
• 2Skills: the tools and systems the posting names, in the order the posting ranks them.
• 3Bullets: each must-have shown in use, with the result where you have one. This is the strongest placement, because the bullet is the proof.

For Jordan, the changes look like this. The old bullets are plausible, and so are the new ones. Every fact in the new bullets was already true.

Where keywords hide in a posting

Postings are not written to be mined. The best keywords are often in places people skip.

1. 1

   Scheduling Coordinator

   Job title

   The employer's own name for the role. Your resume may show a different title for what you did. Describe the work in these words.

2. 2

   Manage appointment scheduling across our four clinics ... reduce no-shows

   Opening paragraph

   The employer's own summary of the job. Whatever sits here is the core. Echo it in your summary.

3. 3

   Verify insurance information and collect copays at check-in

   Duties list

   The day-to-day work, written as verbs. These are your bullet-point keywords.

4. 4

   2+ years of scheduling or front desk experience

   Requirements list

   The gates. Years of experience, credentials and tools often appear only here.

5. 5

   Bilingual English/Spanish a plus

   Plus signs and preferred lists

   Differentiators. They rarely decide the application but they often decide a tie.

Two other places are worth a look. The company's own website often uses the same vocabulary as the posting and can tell you which version of a term they prefer. And when two postings for the same job exist, comparing them shows which terms are the employer's and which are boilerplate from the job board.

Exact words or close ones?

When a posting names a term that describes your work accurately, use the posting's term. The goal is for a skimming reader, or a search, to recognize it immediately. When the posting uses a term for something you did not do, leave it out, however close it feels.

The difficult cases are in between: you did the work but called it something else. Employers describe the same job differently, and your last employer's vocabulary may not match this one's.

The same method in three other fields

The scheduling example comes from healthcare, but nothing about the method is specific to it. Here are three shorter postings from other fields, each reduced to its keywords. Try covering the answers and doing the sort yourself first.

Posting excerpt: retail shift supervisor (made up)

Shift Supervisor, Brightway Home Goods

Lead a team of 8 to 12 associates on opening and closing shifts. Handle cash office procedures, daily deposits and till reconciliation. Coach associates on customer service standards and resolve customer complaints on the floor. Maintain visual merchandising to planogram. Inventory counts and receiving experience required. Keyholder experience a plus.

Posting excerpt: warehouse associate (made up)

Warehouse Associate, Northline Distribution

Pick, pack and stage orders using a handheld scanner and warehouse management system. Operate a sit-down forklift (certification required). Meet daily pick-rate and accuracy targets. Follow OSHA and company safety procedures. Must be able to lift 50 pounds. Cycle counting experience preferred.

Posting excerpt: elementary classroom teacher (made up)

Third Grade Teacher, Maple Ridge Elementary

Plan and deliver standards-based lessons in reading, math and science. Use formative assessment to adjust instruction and support differentiated learning for diverse learners. Maintain classroom management that supports a positive environment. Communicate with families through conferences and regular updates. Hold a valid state teaching license. ESL endorsement a plus.

Look at what repeats across the three. Every posting has a credential or a gate that is easy to check, a core duty that appears more than once, and a short list of preferred extras. That pattern holds for most postings in most fields, and once you can see it, extraction speeds up.

Hard gates and soft preferences

Credentials and physical requirements behave differently from skills. A forklift certification, a teaching license or a CDL is a yes or no that the employer can verify, and without it the rest of your resume may not get read. A skill such as customer service is a matter of degree, and you make the case with examples. When you sort a posting, mark the gates first. If you fail one, you have learned something important in five minutes. If you pass them all, the rest of the work is about showing how well you do the job.

How many keywords is too many

There is no count that is right for everyone, but there is a point where adding more keywords makes a resume worse.

• A resume has a fixed amount of room. Every keyword you add pushes something else out, and a bullet that works hard to include four terms reads like a list instead of a sentence.
• A hiring manager reads for sense. Two or three strong, specific phrases near the top do more for a person than twelve crammed into a skills box.
• Repetition has a use, but it needs a reason. Using "scheduling" in the summary, a skill line and two bullets is accurate if you scheduled across those jobs. Using it eight times because the posting did reads as padding.

A practical limit: aim to cover every must-have once, the top two or three of them twice, and then stop. If a bullet needs a keyword to be understood, it belongs. If it needs one to be counted, it does not.

What to do with gaps

A gap is a must-have you cannot honestly show. Everyone has some. The useful question is what to do about each one.

The posting is an employer's wish list, and employers rarely find someone who ticks every box. A candidate who matches most of the must-haves and is clear about what they do not have is a realistic hire. One who claims everything is a risk.

Mistakes that cost interviews

A checklist you can reuse

Keyword pass, per posting

• Read the whole posting once before marking anything
• Underline skills, tools, duties, credentials, titles and standards
• Tally repeats and note where each term appears
• Sort into must-have, supporting and nice-to-have
• Write one real example next to every must-have
• Mark each gap as add, describe honestly, or leave
• Put the top terms in the summary, the skills list and the bullets where they are true
• Re-read as an interviewer and prepare an answer for each keyword you used

0 of 8 done

Doing the same thing faster

Done by hand, this pass takes 10 to 15 minutes per posting once you are practiced, and longer when you are not. That is a reasonable price for the roles you most want, and a heavy one when you are applying to twenty.

SnugCV's tailoring runs this same logic against the profile you build once from your resume: it marks the keywords your history supports, lists the gaps for you to decide on, and rewrites the summary, the skills order and the bullets in the posting's language. Employers, titles, dates and education are copied unchanged. How to read your tailored resume explains the matched keywords and gaps panels, and how to tailor your resume to a job posting in about a minute walks through the steps.

Keep going

Once your keywords are placed, the next lever is the wording of the bullets themselves, which resume bullet points: formulas and before-and-after rewrites covers in detail, and the choice of verbs, which resume action verbs lists by type of work. If you are changing fields, career change resume shows how to map old work to a new posting's vocabulary.