Every job posting is a list of search terms in disguise. Somewhere in it are the skills, tools and phrases a recruiter will type into their applicant tracking system when they go looking for candidates. If you can find the keywords in a job description for your resume quickly, and match each one to something you’ve genuinely done, most of the work of tailoring is already finished.

This method takes about 15 minutes per posting. You need the job description, your current resume and three highlighter colors, on paper or in any document editor.

Why keywords matter (and why they’re not a trick)

Competition for each opening is real. Greenhouse, whose hiring software is used by thousands of companies, reported an average of 244 applications per job in 2025, up from 116 in 2022 (Greenhouse recruiting benchmarks). With a pile that size, recruiters often search and filter instead of reading every resume top to bottom. Our explainer on what an ATS actually does with your resume covers that process in detail.

So keywords aren’t about fooling a robot. They’re about describing work you’ve really done in the words this employer uses, so that both a search and a skimming human can find it.

Step 1: Get the posting into a form you can mark up (minutes 0–2)

Paste the posting into a blank document, or print it. Then delete the parts that won’t help: the equal-opportunity statement, the benefits list and most of the company history. Skim those for anything unusual, but don’t map them.

While you’re there, save a copy of the full posting with the company name in the file name. Postings get taken down, and you’ll want it again if you get an interview.

Step 2: Read it once without highlighting (minutes 2–4)

Read the whole thing before you mark anything. You’re looking for the shape of the job: the title, the level, the team, and the problem they’re hiring someone to solve. A posting that mentions “scaling” three times is telling you something different from one that keeps saying “process” and “compliance”.

Step 3: Highlight in three colors (minutes 4–9)

Now go through it again with three colors:

  • Yellow for must-haves. Skills, tools and qualifications under “Requirements” or “What you’ll need”, plus anything in the job title.
  • Green for nice-to-haves. Look for “preferred”, “bonus”, “a plus” and “familiarity with”.
  • Blue for context. The responsibilities, the team, the industry and the problems they mention.

What counts as a keyword? Hard skills (SQL, budgeting, phlebotomy), tools (Salesforce, Figma, Excel), certifications and licenses (CPA, PMP), domain terms (B2B SaaS, clinical trials), title words (senior, program manager) and soft skills when they’re phrased specifically, like “stakeholder management”. Skip generic adjectives like “passionate”, “driven” or “fast-paced”. Nobody searches for those.

Here’s a short, fictional example:

Customer Success Manager, Larkspur (fictional example) You’ll own a book of mid-market accounts, run onboarding for new customers and lead quarterly business reviews (QBRs). Requirements: 3+ years in customer success or account management at a B2B SaaS company; experience with Salesforce; a track record of improving retention. Nice to have: Gainsight, renewals forecasting.

Highlighted, that becomes:

  • Must-haves: customer success, account management, B2B SaaS, Salesforce, retention, onboarding, QBRs
  • Nice-to-haves: Gainsight, renewals forecasting
  • Context: mid-market accounts, owning a book of business

The must-have test

Some terms are hard to classify. For each one you’re unsure about, ask three questions:

  1. Is it in the job title?
  2. Does it appear more than once?
  3. Is it listed under the requirements?

Two or more yeses: treat it as a must-have. One yes: probably a nice-to-have. None: it’s context.

Step 4: Write down the exact phrasing (minutes 9–11)

Search tools match words, so the exact wording matters more than you’d think. Note:

  • The posting’s phrase for things you’ve done. If they say “customer onboarding” and you’ve always said “client implementation”, note theirs.
  • Acronyms. Plan to write both forms once, such as “quarterly business reviews (QBRs)”, so either search finds you.
  • Spelling variants. “PostgreSQL” or “Postgres”, “e-commerce” or “ecommerce”. Use the posting’s version.

Step 5: Map every keyword to proof (minutes 11–15)

This is the step most people skip, and it’s the one that matters most. Make a simple table with one row per must-have, then the nice-to-haves:

Keyword (posting’s words) Type Where it’s proven on my resume Status
Customer onboarding Must-have Harbor & Pine, bullet 2: “helped new clients get set up” Proven, different words
QBRs Must-have Not on the resume, but I ran quarterly reviews with my accounts Real, but missing
Salesforce Must-have Skills section only Weak: add it to a bullet
Gainsight Nice-to-have Never used it Gap

(Alex Moreno at Harbor & Pine is a fictional example.)

Every row ends up with one of four statuses:

  • Proven and visible. Leave it alone.
  • Proven, different words. Reword the line using the posting’s term.
  • Real, but missing from the resume. Add a bullet about it.
  • Gap. You haven’t done it. Go to step 6.

Step 6: Decide what to do with each gap

Gaps are normal. Most people who get hired don’t tick every box. Your options:

  • A nice-to-have you don’t have: leave it out and move on.
  • A must-have where you have something close: describe the close thing honestly. Daily use of HubSpot isn’t Salesforce, but “CRM (HubSpot)” shows the underlying skill.
  • A hard requirement you don’t meet, like a license or a clearance: think about whether this application is the best use of your time.

The one thing never to do is add a keyword you can’t back up. Interviewers ask about what’s on the page, and a skill you can’t discuss costs you more than a gap would.

Where the keywords should go

Once your map is done, put each keyword where it does the most work:

  • Summary: your two or three strongest must-haves, in the posting’s words.
  • Bullets: inside real accomplishments. “Ran customer onboarding for new accounts, from kickoff call to first live workflow” is far stronger than a bare list.
  • Skills section: tools and hard skills, grouped, in the posting’s spelling.

Avoid the tricks that circulate online: white text, a block of pasted keywords, or repeating one term ten times. People read your resume, and those tricks undermine everything else on the page. Our guide on how to tailor your resume to a job description walks through the rewriting itself.

A worksheet you can copy

Paste this outline into a document for each posting you apply to:

Job, company and date applied

Must-haves (in the title, repeated, or under requirements): keyword · the posting’s exact phrase · my proof (role and bullet) · status

Nice-to-haves: keyword · the posting’s exact phrase · my proof · status

Context: what problem is this hire meant to solve?

Gaps: each one, and what I’ll do about it

After a few postings in the same field, you’ll notice the same keywords coming back. Keep your completed worksheets. They become a ready-made list of proof for your next application, and for interview prep.

Let a tool do the first pass

Fifteen minutes per posting is worth it for a job you really want. If you’d like a head start, Seamhire’s free ATS check pulls the keywords out of a posting, shows which ones your resume already matches and which are missing, and flags formatting issues. You still decide what’s true, and what goes on the page.