Job searchers have heard over and over again that every resume must be tailored to fit the job description to give the best chance to get through the ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems). Poring through job descriptions can be a tedious and time-consuming effort. Word clouds don’t show word frequency and there aren’t any fully free resume keyword tools.
Use a Parts-of-Speech Parser
A parser breaks documents into their different parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions) and clearly displays them for the user. Categorizing a posted job into its different parts of speech makes the identification of phrases and keywords much easier for updating your resume. Rewordify allows users to classify resumes into their different parts of speech by easy-to-view color coding – and it's free!
How to Use Rewordify to Create a Resume Keyword List
Go to Rewordify.com
Copy and paste your target job description into the big yellow box.
Click “Rewordify text.”
Then, click “Parts of speech” at the top of the page to get your results.
Below are the results after cutting and pasting a Project Manager job description from LinkedIn:
What are the Top Resume Keywords?
While it’s not possible to know the exact keywords recruiters are using, they are usually nouns. To highlight the nouns for this job description, deselect all other parts of speech (except nouns) at the top of the screen.
That will leave them, as highlighted in grey below.
Nouns are the Best Resume Keywords
Review all the highlighted nouns in the job description and pick those that recruiters might enter to search on resumes in their applicant tracking system or LinkedIn for candidates. The
Project Manager job description has the following noun keywords:
Enterprise wide | Cross functional |
New products and services | Matrixed organization |
Business value | Relationship building |
Problem solving | Critical thinking |
Separate the nouns that are specifically related to the education and experience requirements of the job:
BA/BS | 8 years project management |
PMP | Agile Methodology |
JIRA | Confluence |
Agile | Scrum |
This is the target resume keyword list. Recruiters are most likely using any and all of these words to search for highly qualified candidates.
Hard Skills as Resume Keywords
Next, go through the noun lists and identify hard skills. These are the ‘must haves’ portion of the target job. You can absolutely expect recruiters and hiring managers to look for these hard skills. Here’s a list from the Project Manager posted job:
Application development | System Integration |
Process reengineering | Infrastructure upgrades |
Deployments | Planning strategic initiatives |
Complex projects | Project lifecycle |
Financial forecasts | Spend management |
Weave Skills Into Your Resume
Rather than dropping all keywords into a skills list, weave your skills into the body of your resume, into the responsibilities, accomplishments, and skills sections. As you can see, once you make it easy to spot the nouns in a job posting, your resume keyword opportunities expand significantly.
How to Use Job Posting Verbs in Your Resume
Verbs can be valuable for helping start accomplishment statements. Following are some great action verbs from the Project Manager job posting:
Improve | |
Collaborate | Lead |
Define | Deliver |
Manage | Oversee |
Develop | Build |
Mobilize | Execute |
Engineer | Process |
Separating out the verbs used in the job posting gives great insight into how to write targeted and specific accomplishments. It also helps us expand our 'resume writing' vocabulary!
Update and Submit to the ATS
Now all that’s left to do is update your resume and weave the targeted words and phrases into the new version. You’ve greatly increased your chances of getting the resume through the ATS system and an interview!
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