Job-posting keyword studies for 7 roles: Software Engineer, Marketing, Cybersecurity, Accountant, Account Executive, Product Manager and DevOps & SRE, from 3,518 real postings. Each study reports which terms postings for that role use and how often, with the method and its limits. Keyword guides for 3 more roles are listed below the studies.
The role guide
What to write: the keyword categories for the role, weak and strong bullet examples, and role-specific questions.
The job-posting study
What postings contain: measured term frequencies from the ATS resume keyword study, for the seven roles it covers.
Your posting
What one employer asked for: run the ATS resume checker on it, then see how to read a keyword gap.
Each study counts the terms in real postings for one role.
Software Engineer
Software Engineer Job Description Keyword Study (1,360 postings)
Mentoring appears in 47.4% of postings, more than Kubernetes or React
DevOps Engineer
DevOps and SRE Job Description Keyword Study (134 postings)
Terraform appears in 62.7%, Jenkins in 3%
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity Job Description Keyword Study (212 postings)
Python appears in 53.3%, CISSP in 5.7%
Product Manager
Product Manager Job Description Keyword Study (421 postings)
Roadmap appears in 85.5%, Jira in 1.7%
Sales Account Executive
Account Executive Job Description Keyword Study (921 postings)
BANT appears in 0 postings; MEDDIC is named more often than Salesforce
Accountant
Accountant Job Posting Keyword Study (123 postings)
CPA, GAAP and NetSuite frequencies, each with its margin of error
Marketing
Marketing Job Description Keyword Study (347 postings)
The ad platforms barely appear. Pipeline does.
SQL, Power BI, Tableau, statistics
C-suite, P&L, board governance, transformation
Entry-level ATS keywords, internships, transferable skills
A study covers a role. A posting names specific terms. Paste your resume and the job description to see your match score and the keywords you are missing.
Check My Resume →How to Pass ATS →
Parsing, formatting and recruiter search, step by step
Resume Passes ATS But No Interviews? →
What to check when applications go unanswered
How to Tailor Your Resume to a Job Description →
Step-by-step guide to matching a specific posting
What an ATS Match Score Means →
How the match percentage is computed and what moves it
ATS Resume Checker →
Score your resume against any job posting in under a minute
How to Read a Resume Keyword Gap →
Which missing keywords to add, reword or leave out
Cover Letter Checker →
Apply the same keyword analysis to your cover letter
ATS Resume Keyword Study: All Seven Role Studies →
The combined corpus, the method, the limits of each sample, and the data as CSV