Should You Stuff Your Resume With Keywords?

Mirror the job description. Then stop a little short of it.

A guide from MyJobDaddy · Tyson McKay

When I read a job description, the first thing I look at is how they wrote it, and then I do my best to mirror that style in my resume. If the posting is highly technical, whatever the field, and it names specific systems and uses specific terminology, I mirror that too, but I never go further than they did, and a little less is better. Most job descriptions aren't written that way, and when they aren't, my resume shouldn't be either.

People used to be told to stuff as many buzzwords into a resume as they could fit. In some technical fields that still makes some sense. But I look at a resume as the CliffsNotes of your professional career. It should tell a clear story in bullet form, and it shouldn't bury the reader in language that doesn't sound like a human wrote it.

What stuffing does to the person reading it

In a stuffed resume every term from the posting shows up somewhere, often more than once, and the bullets stop describing anything you did and start reading like the posting pasted back at the person who wrote it. The reader is looking for the story of what you've done and whether it fits their problem, and a wall of buzzwords hides that story instead of telling it.

The words themselves aren't the problem. The problem is using more of them than the job asked for, or using them for things you haven't actually done.

Mirror the job description, don't copy it

Mirroring starts with reading the posting for how it's written, not only for what it says. Is it plain and conversational, or formal? Short, or long and detailed? Does it name the tools and systems it uses, or does it talk about the work in general terms? Your resume should sound like it belongs next to it.

Where they have a name for something you've done, use their name for it. If they call it client onboarding and your old job called it account setup, and it's the same work, say it their way. That is translation, and it's honest. What it isn't is permission to add a term for something you've never done because it appeared in the posting.

Then hold back a little. If they name six systems and you've worked in four of them, name the four. If the posting is light on jargon, keep yours light too. Matching their level and staying a step under it reads like someone who knows the work. Going past it reads like someone padding the page.

I go through the rest of the tailoring process in How to Tailor Your Resume to a Job Posting.

The best keywords are usually experience you left off

When a resume doesn't match a posting, the gap is often not missing words, it's missing experience that you have and didn't include. Most of us keep one version of our history, trimmed down for the jobs we usually apply to, and the parts we trimmed are exactly what a different kind of role is looking for.

That's one of the things we designed into MyJobDaddy's Elite plan. You upload the job description and your current resume, run a gap analysis, and see how you rank against the role. It shows you your gaps, and then it asks you about experience that may not be on your current resume, so the tailored version can include what's true and relevant instead of more buzzwords. You can see your Role Fit Score for free, a 0 to 100 match against the job with the single biggest gap named, before you decide whether you need the rest.

Questions people ask

Twenty years ago I worked in government. It isn't on my normal resume, and when I apply for a role in government, I add it back in.