Keyword Checker
Paste your CV and a job description side by side to see which of the posting's significant terms appear in your CV, which are missing, and which you have repeated too often.
About the Keyword Checker
Recruiters and tracking systems both look for overlap between a posting and a CV, and the gap is usually invisible to the applicant because they know they have the experience — they simply described it using different words. This tool makes that gap explicit by extracting the significant terms from a job description and checking each against your CV.
Results split three ways. Matches are terms present in both. Missing are terms the posting emphasises that your CV never uses. Overused flags terms you have repeated so often that the CV reads as padded, which recruiters notice and discount.
The point is not to reach a hundred percent match. A missing keyword is a prompt to ask whether you have that experience and have simply named it differently — in which case change the wording — or whether you do not have it, in which case adding it would be dishonest and would fail at interview.
How to use it
- Paste your CV into the first box, or upload it as .txt, .docx or .pdf.
- Paste the full job description into the second box, including the responsibilities and requirements sections.
- Review the matched, missing and overused lists.
- For each missing term, decide whether you have that experience under a different name. If you do, rewrite the relevant bullet to use the posting's vocabulary. If you do not, leave it out.
When you would reach for this
- Tailoring one base CV for a specific posting without rewriting it from scratch.
- Finding out that your CV says 'stakeholder liaison' where every posting in your field says 'client management'.
- Spotting that a single term appears eleven times and reads as keyword stuffing.
Frequently asked questions
What match percentage should I aim for?
There is no threshold that guarantees anything, and chasing a high number by stuffing terms backfires. Covering the posting's core requirements in your own accurate words is the goal; a genuine 60 percent beats an engineered 90 percent.
Should I add keywords I do not have experience with?
No. It may get you through an initial filter, but it fails at the interview and wastes everyone's time. Use missing terms to check whether you have described real experience in the wrong vocabulary.
Why is a keyword flagged as overused?
Because it appears far more often than the surrounding text warrants, which is the signature of keyword stuffing. Recruiters read it as padding, and some systems discount heavily repeated terms rather than rewarding them.