Keywords are skills and abilities an applicant needs in order to get hired. These are the 500 top resume keywords recruiters, hiring managers, and ATS are looking for when vetting applicants.
by Jon Shields
What Are Resume Keywords?
Job listings include the abilities and competencies an applicant needs in order to be a great hire. These skills become keywords used by recruiters and hiring managers to quickly identify top candidates whether they’re skimming with their eyes or using software to filter applicants based on resume keywords.
“The first thing I’m looking for is the hard skills that match the job description,” a corporate recruiter told Jobscan.
Recruiters don’t carefully read resumes line by line. They take a cursory glance and only dig deeper if past job titles or skills pique their interest. Having the right resume keywords is even more critical when technology enters the mix.
Most companies (including 99% of Fortune 500) use software known as applicant tracking systems (ATS) that can scan the content of a resume to make it searchable. Some systems, like Taleo, can even automatically filter and rank applicants based on the job description. This means that a highly qualified applicant could slip through the cracks or get wrongly rejected if their resume isn’t optimized with the right keywords.
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Our collection of over 1000 resume words, including keywords, action verbs, skills, and adjectives.
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Top 500 Resume Keywords List
Below is a list of the hard skills and keywords that appear most frequently in Jobscan‘s database of real job descriptions. These are the top resume keywords recruiters, hiring managers, and ATS algorithms are looking for when vetting applicants.
These examples demonstrate the types of keywords to include in your resume. To boost your chances of getting past an ATS and landing a job interview, be sure to to tailor your resume keywords to the specific job for which you’re applying.
Try the Jobscan resume optimization tool to get your personalized list of top resume keywords.