What counts as a keyword

Hard skills
Tools, technologies, languages, methods, regulations and domain terms: Excel, Salesforce, GAAP, React, SEO, IFRS 17, clinical trials.
Job titles
The title of the role and close variants: “Financial Analyst”, “FP&A Analyst”.
Qualifications
Degrees, certifications and licences the posting names: CPA, PMP, a nursing registration.
Soft skills
Named capabilities like stakeholder management or mentoring. These matter less as keywords and more as evidence in bullets.

Finding them

  1. Collect three to five postings
    Similar roles you'd apply for, from different employers.
  2. Highlight requirements
    Mark the skills, tools, qualifications and titles in the requirements and responsibilities sections.
  3. Count repeats
    Terms that appear in most postings are the core of the role. One-off terms are employer-specific.
  4. Sort honestly
    Split the list into terms you have strong evidence for, some evidence for, and none.

Where to put them

Put each keyword where it's supported:

  • Headline: the target job title, if it's accurate for you.
  • Summary: two or three of the core skills.
  • Experience bullets: where you used the skill, with what result. This is the most convincing place.
  • Skills section: the full list of relevant hard skills, using standard names.
Before

Skills: Data analysis, reporting, dashboards

After

Built weekly Power BI dashboards on SQL Server data for the regional sales team, replacing 12 manual Excel reports.

The second version contains “Power BI”, “SQL Server” and “Excel” and proves you used them.

Names and spellings

Use the standard name of each tool, matching the posting. Include both the acronym and the full term once for less common ones, such as “Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)”. Some variants are equivalent (Node.js and NodeJS; Kubernetes and K8s) and good systems treat them as such, but don't rely on it. Similar-looking names can be different skills: Java and JavaScript aren't the same thing, and neither are C and C#.

Only what you can back up

Every keyword on your resume is something an interviewer can ask about. Adding a skill you don't have might get your resume found, but it fails at the next stage and damages trust. For a requirement you partly meet, describe what you have done: “Built reports in Tableau; currently learning Power BI” is honest and still relevant.

Keyword stuffing

Listing dozens of terms, repeating the same keyword in every bullet, or hiding text in white font doesn't work. Parsers extract hidden text, recruiters see it in the parsed profile, and a resume that reads like a keyword list gives them no reason to believe any of it. Repeating a term many times also doesn't help: matching usually counts whether a term is present, not how often.

Checklist

  • The target job title appears in your headline, if it's accurate.
  • Core skills from the postings appear in bullets with evidence, not only in a list.
  • Tools use standard names and the posting's spelling.
  • Nothing is listed that you couldn't discuss in an interview.
  • No hidden text and no repeated keyword lists.