Does Your Resume Have Too Many Keywords?

Due to the fact that many employers now use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to streamline recruiting, it’s smart for job candidates to incorporate certain keywords into their resume. Doing so increases the odds that your resume rises to the surface and winds up in the hands of recruiters.

Unfortunately, some applicants take it too far and use too many keywords. Keep reading to learn what keyword stuffing is, and how to effectively use keywords in your resume to appeal to both ATS and humans readers.

What is Keyword Stuffing?

Keyword stuffing is when you use an excessive number of keywords to the point that it looks unnatural, or the keywords are irrelevant to your skills or the job you’re applying for. This is problematic because taking things to extremes in this manner can actually have a negative effect and increases the likelihood of your resume being discarded.

The Right Way to Use Keywords

When it comes to choosing keywords and their density, there are three main things to keep in mind: relevancy, balance and naturalness. The keywords you choose should be relevant to the position you’re applying for, dispersed evenly throughout the body of content and read naturally to human recruiters.

For example, you wouldn’t say, “I’m a professional customer service representative and have been doing this professionally since 2010.” This would be using the term “professional” excessively.

The bottom line is you want to use enough keywords to work your way through an ATS so your resume finds its way to a recruiter. But you don’t want to use so many that you raise eyebrows.

Specific Elements to Include

To decide which areas to focus on, Live Career suggests the “names of processes, hardware, company names and educational background are all things that a hiring manager notices.” You can usually determine which keywords are most important by looking at a few job descriptions for a position in your industry and identifying the keywords that are used most frequently.

You’ll also want to use plenty of action keywords because they tend to resonate well with hiring managers. Some examples include:

  • Achieved
  • Adapted
  • Motivated
  • Led
  • Supervised

You can get plenty of other ideas with this list of 100 Great Resume Words.

Keywords are no doubt an integral part of getting found by recruiters and ensuring that your resume makes it to the second round of the hiring process. However, keyword stuffing can have a negative effect and is a practice that should be avoided. By using the right keywords in a natural way, you can increase your odds of getting noticed by hiring managers, and help you land an interview.

You can learn much more about optimizing your resume and get other helpful advice with our job search tips.

One thought on “Does Your Resume Have Too Many Keywords?

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