Job ad keywords: required, important, a plus

An ad has parts, and they weigh differently

The engine first splits the ad into sections by their headings: „Requirements”, „Responsibilities”, „Nice to have”, „What we offer”, „About us”, „Hiring process”. Each section gets its own weight, because each says something different.

• Requirements („Qualifications”, „Your profile”, „What you'll need”) — weigh the most. This is the description of the person they are looking for.
• Responsibilities („What you'll do”, „Your role”) — right behind. They say what you will use day to day.
• Text before the first heading — somewhere in the middle. Quite often the whole ad sits there as one paragraph.
• Nice to have — little. Extras, not a condition.
• About us — next to nothing. A company that „runs on Salesforce” is not asking you to.
• What we offer and the hiring process — zero.

That last point matters. If „What we offer” counted for anything, the report would tell you to add „private medical care” to your CV, and „Power BI training” from the benefits list would pose as a requirement. What the company gives you is not what it expects from you.

Required, important, nice to have

Every keyword gets one of three levels. The rules are simple and worth knowing, because a recruiter reads the ad the same way:

• Required — the word sits in the requirements section, or in a sentence with a signal word: „required”, „must”, „essential”, „mandatory”.
• Nice to have — every mention is in the nice-to-have section, or in a sentence with „a plus”, „preferred”, „desirable”, „bonus”.
• Important — everything else: what appears in the responsibilities and the role description.

One mention outside the nice-to-haves is enough for a word to stop being an extra. If Excel is „a plus” in one place and the responsibilities say „reporting in Excel”, Excel is important, not optional.

One skill, several names

The engine's dictionary groups variants of the same skill: „JS” and „JavaScript”, „SEM” and „Google Ads”, „MS Excel” and „Excel”. So a CV that says „SEM” is not told „missing: Google Ads”.

But the report will tell you that the ad uses a different form than your CV. Not every applicant tracking system knows every synonym, and many compare text literally. If the ad says „Google Ads” and you wrote „SEM”, the safest thing is to have both — inside a specific role, not in a footnote at the end.

Where the word sits in your CV

On the other side of the comparison is your CV, and position matters there too. A word from the ad can be in your CV as:

• evidenced — it appears in your experience, next to what you did with it,
• weak — it is only on the skills list, or appears once with no context,
• missing — it is not there at all.

A skills list is a claim. The same word inside a role description — „reported campaign results to the board every month” — is evidence. A filter lets both through. The person reading afterwards lets through only the second.

What to do with the keyword list

1. Start with the required ones. Each one you genuinely have but your CV does not mention goes into the description of the role where you used it.
2. Use the form the ad uses. If you normally say it differently, keep both.
3. Treat the important ones as a checklist of tasks: does your experience show you have done similar things?
4. Nice to have comes last. A missing extra is not a reason not to apply.
5. Do not add what you do not have. A keyword in a CV is a promise someone will check in the interview.

Hard requirements are a separate matter: years of experience, education, languages, a driving licence. These are not words to add but conditions — you either meet them, or it is worth saying clearly in your CV how you do.