Keyword Strategy

How to match your resume's language to the job listing's, so both the parser and the recruiter see the fit.

Find your target keywords

Pull them straight from the job description: responsibilities, required skills, nice-to-have skills, certifications, tools and technologies, and any industry terms that keep coming up.
Weight what's listed as required or repeated more than once over anything mentioned just once as a nice-to-have.

ATS keyword matching is literal. If the listing says "stakeholder management," write that — not "stakeholder coordination."
Only swap in a synonym if the listing itself uses it somewhere else. Otherwise, keep its exact phrasing.
Watch regional spelling. "Data visualisation" and "data visualization" are different strings to a parser — match whichever the listing uses.

Summary: work 4–6 of your strongest keyword skills into 1–3 sentences right at the top.
Skills section: list them as a flat, comma-separated list rather than bullets — parsers extract this section on its own, and comma lists parse more reliably.
Experience bullets: weave keywords into the achievements themselves, not just the standalone skills list.
Education: only add keywords or coursework here if they genuinely apply — padding this section doesn't help.

Aim for each critical keyword to show up 2–4 times across the whole document — summary, skills, and experience combined.
The repetition should read naturally in context. A recruiter reads the same document a parser does, so it still has to make sense as prose.

Verb + skill/keyword + outcome

• Improved a Python data pipeline's efficiency by 30% by implementing optimized scripts.
• Led a team of 5 analysts, delivering insights that increased revenue by €1.2M.
• Developed Power BI dashboards used by 120+ stakeholders across Finance and Operations.

Swapping in a synonym the listing doesn't use, even if it means the same thing
Keyword-stuffing the skills section with terms that don't appear anywhere else in the CV
Listing skills only once, in a wall at the bottom, instead of reinforcing them in the summary and experience bullets
Ignoring a regional spelling the listing specifically uses (e.g. "optimise" vs "optimize")
Weakening a job title match unnecessarily (e.g. "Business Analyst – Intern" instead of "Business Analyst Intern")