How to find ATS keywords in a job description
The job posting is the answer key. What to pull from it, where each keyword goes on your resume, and a worked example from posting to bullet point.
By Will Bryant · Updated October 12, 2026
ATS keywords are the job titles, skills, tools, qualifications and repeated phrases in a job posting, because those are the words recruiters search for and matching tools compare with your resume. Find them in the title, the requirements and anything the posting says twice, then use the posting’s exact wording on your resume wherever it’s true of you.
The same method works for a UK CV; only the document’s name changes.
Why the exact words matter
Your resume often has to come up in a search before anyone reads it closely. Greenhouse, one widely used applicant tracking system, lets recruiters search for job titles, skills and other keywords in the full text of resumes, and it says that to appear in the results, ‘the keyword from your search must exactly match the keyword in the application.’ The UK government’s guidance on AI in recruitment says screening tools mostly work the same way: ‘In most cases, the tool will score candidates using keyword search results, based on criteria defined by the employer.’
Employers know how literal this can be. In a 2021 Harvard Business School and Accenture report, 88% of employers agreed that qualified high-skills candidates are screened out because they don’t match the exact criteria in the job description. That’s employers describing their own process rather than a measured rejection rate, but it tells you where the risk sits.
How to find the keywords in five steps
- Paste the posting into a blank document, so you can mark it up.
- Highlight the nouns that name things you could search for: titles, skills, tools, certifications and industry terms.
- Mark anything the posting says twice. Repetition tells you what the writer cares about.
- Copy the must-haves into their own list. They usually sit under ‘Requirements’, ‘Qualifications’ or ‘What you’ll need’ (UK postings often say ‘Essential criteria’).
- Check each one against your resume, and add it in the posting’s own words wherever it’s true.
Doing the same for two or three similar postings shows which terms are standard for the role and which belong to one employer.
A worked example: from posting to resume
The posting and the resume lines below are invented for illustration.
Example posting (excerpt): Operations Manager, regional distribution center. We’re hiring an operations manager to run a 120,000 sq ft distribution center. You’ll own inventory accuracy, labor planning and safety (OSHA), and lead continuous improvement using Lean methods. Requirements: 5+ years in warehouse operations, experience with a warehouse management system (WMS), and P&L responsibility. Lean Six Sigma Green Belt preferred. You’ll work with cross-functional teams and report KPIs weekly.
| Keyword in the posting | Type | Where it goes | Example line on the resume |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operations manager | Job title | Summary, and your job title if it was your real one | ‘Operations manager with 8 years running distribution centers of up to 150 staff’ |
| Inventory accuracy | Responsibility | Experience bullet, with a number | ‘Raised inventory accuracy from 96.1% to 99.4% across 22,000 SKUs in a year’ |
| Labor planning | Responsibility | Experience bullet | ‘Rebuilt labor planning around inbound truck times, cutting overtime by 18%’ |
| Safety (OSHA) | Requirement | Bullet or certifications | ‘Trained 40 supervisors on OSHA standards; no recordable injuries in 2025’ |
| Lean, continuous improvement | Method | Experience bullet | ‘Ran six Lean continuous improvement events, saving 1,100 labor hours a year’ |
| Warehouse management system (WMS) | Tool | Skills section, written out once | ‘Skills: warehouse management system (WMS), Excel, inventory forecasting’ |
| P&L responsibility | Must-have | Summary or bullet | ‘Owned a $14M site P&L and delivered budget two years running’ |
| Lean Six Sigma Green Belt | Certification | Certifications, full name | ‘Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, 2022’ |
| Cross-functional teams | Working style | Bullet, with evidence | ‘Led a cross-functional team from transportation and customer service that cut late deliveries by 30%’ |
| KPIs | Acronym | Bullet, written out once | ‘Reported weekly key performance indicators (KPIs) to the regional director’ |
Strong and weak keyword use
| Situation | Weak | Strong |
|---|---|---|
| Your wording differs from the posting’s | ‘Managed stakeholders’ (the posting says ‘stakeholder management’) | ‘Led stakeholder management across finance, sales and IT for a $3M system rollout’ |
| Acronym only | ‘Ran SEO’ | ‘Grew organic traffic 40% through search engine optimization (SEO)’ |
| A keyword list with no evidence | ‘Skills: Agile, Scrum, Jira, Agile, Scrum’ | ‘Ran two-week Scrum sprints in Jira for a 7-person team’ |
| Vague language | ‘Used various reporting tools’ | ‘Built weekly reports in Tableau and SQL’ |
| An internal job title | ‘Customer Happiness Hero’ | ‘Customer Success Manager (internal title: Customer Happiness Hero)’ |
| A skill you don’t have | ‘Python’, added because the posting asks for it | Leave it out, or ‘Python (beginner, online course, 2026)’ if that’s the truth |
MIT’s career office gives the same advice on the second and fourth rows: avoid abbreviating keywords, and cut vague words such as ‘various’ because they ‘might be masking some beneficial keywords you can use’.
Where each keyword belongs on your resume
- Summary, the top three lines: the target job title and two or three of the posting’s core skills.
- Skills section: hard skills, tools and certifications as plain text.
- Experience bullets: each keyword inside a result. MIT’s advice is that if you’ve done something the posting mentions, you ‘copy + paste + personalize’ it into your resume.
- Job titles: your real title, with the standard one beside it if they differ.
- Certifications and education: the full official name, plus the abbreviation.
Must-haves and screening questions
Treat the posting’s must-haves as the terms a recruiter is most likely to search or screen on. Some employers also add yes-or-no questions to the application, and Greenhouse’s documentation describes rules where, ‘based on an applicant’s answer to a question, they will automatically be rejected’, using whether you hold a commercial driver’s license as its example. Answer those questions carefully and accurately, because a wrong click can end an application before anyone reads your resume.
Only mirror what’s true
Keywords get you into the pile a person reads, and that person, then an interviewer, can ask about every line. MIT puts it plainly: ‘You will still need to be able to account for everything indicated on your resume.’ Claiming a skill you don’t have just moves the rejection a few steps later.
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Next steps
- Check your resume against a posting: paste the posting into the free resume builder and the form shows which of its most frequent words your resume already uses. The skills list it writes only includes skills your resume shows.
- Get the format right too: how to make an ATS-friendly resume.
- Do the same on LinkedIn: recruiters search profiles by keyword as well, covered in how recruiters search LinkedIn.
- Carry the words into your letter: how to write a cover letter.
Turn the resume you have into one aimed at your next role, saved as a Word document in minutes. Free with an account.
Build my resume, free →Common questions
Across the whole document. Greenhouse, for example, lets recruiters search the full text of resumes, so a keyword counts wherever it appears. For the person who reads next, the strongest places are your job titles, your skills section and the bullet points under each role, where the term sits beside something you actually did.
Where they're true, yes. Search is often literal: in Greenhouse, a recruiter's keyword has to match the words in your application exactly. If the posting says 'stakeholder management' and you wrote 'managing stakeholders', use their phrase too. Never claim a skill you don't have just because it's in the posting.
There's no magic number, and no system publishes one. Cover every must-have you really meet and the terms the posting repeats, each inside a real achievement. Coverage of the important terms matters more than volume, and a resume that repeats keywords without evidence reads as padding to the recruiter who opens it.
Use both the spelled-out term and the acronym at least once, for example 'search engine optimization (SEO)'. MIT's career office advises against abbreviating keywords, and a recruiter's search only finds the variants they think to type. The same goes for job titles: if yours was unusual, add the standard title it matches.
Sometimes, but usually because of a screening question rather than your resume's wording. Some employers set rules that reject an application based on an answer, such as whether you hold a license the job requires. Answer those questions accurately, because a wrong answer can end the application before anyone reads your resume.
Only with evidence. Titles, skills, tools and qualifications are what recruiters type into a search, and 'team player' on its own tells a reader nothing. Show the skill in a bullet, such as leading a cross-functional project, and use the posting's phrase there if it fits.
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