How to Match Your Resume to a Job Description (and Find the Right Keywords)

"Use keywords from the job description" is advice everyone gives and almost nobody explains. Which words? How many? Where do they go? And how do you do it without ending up with a resume that reads like it was assembled by a machine? This is the manual version of that process — about fifteen minutes per application, no tool required. If you'd rather have software do the first pass, our guide to tailoring with AI covers that, and whether it's worth doing at all for every application is weighed in our guide to tailoring. On the quantity question specifically, how many keywords to include has the answer, and the line you shouldn't cross is in our guide to keyword stuffing. The reason any of this works is covered in our explainer on how an ATS reads a resume, and every layout in our ATS-safe collection keeps the words where a parser can find them. The full ATS collection has the rest.

Why the posting is the answer key

A recruiter searching an applicant tracking system types the words they use, not the words you'd choose. If the posting says "stakeholder management" and your resume says "working with clients," a search for the first term won't return you — even though you've done the thing.

That's the whole mechanic. You're not guessing at what a machine likes. You're matching your vocabulary to the vocabulary of the person who will search for you, and the posting is a written record of exactly what that is.

Step 1: Pull the terms out

Paste the job description into a plain document. Now go through it once and mark every instance of four things:

• Hard skills and tools — named software, languages, certifications, methodologies. "Salesforce," "SQL," "GAAP," "Scrum."
• The job title itself, and any variants used further down. Postings often use two.
• Recurring responsibilities — anything mentioned more than once, or that appears in both the summary and the requirements list. Repetition is the posting telling you what matters.
• Qualification phrases — "5+ years," "bachelor's degree in," "experience managing a team of."

Ignore the culture language. "Fast-paced environment," "team player," "wear many hats" — these are filler, and no recruiter searches them.

You should end up with roughly 10 to 20 terms.

Step 2: Sort them into three piles

The middle pile is where nearly all the value is, and it's the one people skip. You aren't adding anything false — you're relabelling something true so it's findable.

The third pile is not negotiable. Adding a skill you don't have gets found out in the interview, and it wastes a conversation.

Step 3: Put the terms where they count

Placement matters more than frequency:

In your experience bullets. A term inside a sentence about something you actually did carries evidence with it. "Managed stakeholder relationships across four business units" beats the same phrase sitting alone in a skills list.

In your skills section, for hard skills and tools specifically. This is a legitimate place for a bare list of named technologies.

In your summary, for the job title and one or two defining skills.

Not in white text, hidden fields, or a keyword block at the bottom. Every version of that trick is well known, and it reads as dishonest to the human who finds it.

Step 4: Check your coverage

Re-read your tailored resume against your term list. You're aiming to hit most of the first two piles naturally. If a sentence now reads awkwardly, the term is in the wrong place — move it rather than forcing it.

Then read the whole thing aloud once. If it sounds like a person wrote it, you're done. If it sounds like a list of search terms, you've gone too far, and our keyword stuffing guide covers what that costs you.

The fifteen-minute version

For high-volume applying, do only this:

1. Change the job title in your summary to the posting's exact title.
2. Rewrite the top three bullets of your most recent role using the posting's vocabulary.
3. Reorder your skills section so the posting's named tools come first.

That's the majority of the benefit for a fraction of the work.

Frequently asked questions

How many keywords should I actually include? There's no target number, and any tool giving you one is inventing it. Cover the skills you genuinely have that the posting names, and stop. Our full answer on keyword count explains why the number itself is the wrong thing to optimise.

Should I copy phrases from the posting word for word? For skill names, tools, and job titles — yes, exactly as written. For descriptions of your own work, no. Copied sentences read as copied, and the recruiter has the posting open in another tab.

Does this still matter if a human reads my resume first? Yes, and for a better reason. Matching vocabulary makes a recruiter's six-second scan easier, because they're looking for the same words they wrote. The parsing benefit is a bonus.

What if the posting is vague and lists almost no specifics? Then there's little to match, and tailoring gains you less. Look at two or three other postings for the same title at similar companies and use the vocabulary they share.

Is it worth doing this for every single application? Not always — it depends on how many you're sending and how close each one is to your background. Our guide to tailoring works through that tradeoff honestly.