ATS Keyword Database › Methodology
How we source these keywords.
Most online “ATS keywords for [profession]” lists are content-marketing slop — invented entries dressed up as authoritative. We've set our methodology up so every keyword on this site has a citable origin and a real update cadence.
The two sources we use
1. O*NET (US Bureau of Labor Statistics)
O*NET is the official US government occupational database, maintained by the Department of Labor. It contains structured data on ~1,000 occupations: typical tasks, required technologies, knowledge areas, and skills. Every occupation has a unique code (e.g., 15-1252.00 for Software Developers).
We cite the O*NET code on every profession page. You can verify any keyword by visiting onetonline.org and looking up the code yourself.
Strength: Defensible, citable, broadly accurate at the occupational level. Limitation: O*NET updates slowly — it lags real job-market terminology by 1-3 years (e.g., LLM/Generative AI vocabulary is not yet fully integrated). We supplement with the second source.
2. Manual curation of public job descriptions
For each profession we sample 20-30 real job descriptions from public sources: Greenhouse-hosted career boards (URLs starting with boards.greenhouse.io), Lever-hosted boards (jobs.lever.co), and public Workday career sites.
We tally keyword frequency, group into categories, and only include terms that appear in multiple JDs (cutting out hapax-legomena that would just be SEO noise). Each profession page lists the exact sample size — typically 20-32 JDs.
Strength: Captures current market vocabulary, including technologies and methodologies that emerged in the last 12 months. Limitation: Sample size is intentionally modest — we'd rather publish a curated 30-JD list than a scraped 10,000-JD list with no review.
What we deliberately don't do
- We don't scrape Indeed or LinkedIn. Both have explicit terms-of-service prohibiting scraping. Even if the data could be obtained, its provenance is non-defensible — meaning the keywords have no citable origin.
- We don't buy keyword datasets from third parties. Many of the existing “top 100 ATS keywords” lists circulating online are recycled from a single 2019 dataset that's now ~7 years stale. We'd rather have 30 curated keywords from 2026 than 200 inherited from 2019.
- We don't include generic verbs without context. Words like “collaborate”, “drive”, “strategize”, “leverage” appear in nearly every JD ever written. Listing them as “ATS keywords” is the most common content-marketing-slop pattern, and including them on your resume produces no signal because every other applicant has them too.
- We don't fabricate. If a keyword isn't in O*NET and isn't observed in multiple sampled JDs, it doesn't go on the list. Better a short honest list than a long padded one.
Update cadence
Each profession page shows a Last updated stamp at the top. We re-curate at minimum every 6 months — sooner for fast-moving fields (software engineering, data science, AI/ML) where vocabulary shifts in months, not years.
When we update, we re-sample fresh JDs (not re-use the old sample), so the keyword list reflects what current hiring managers are actually writing. The history of previous versions is available on request via hello@atsverification.com.
What our seniority tiers mean
We tier keywords by seniority because what a Junior should surface is genuinely different from what a Staff Engineer should surface. The tiers are calibrated against what we observed in JDs at each level:
- Always include (evergreen): Keywords that appeared in 90%+ of JDs across all seniority levels for that profession.
- Junior / Entry-level (0–3 years): Keywords specific to JDs titled Junior, Associate, I, or Entry-level.
- Mid-level (3–6 years): Keywords specific to JDs titled Mid, II, or with 3-6 years experience requirements.
- Senior (6–10+ years): Keywords specific to JDs titled Senior, III, IV, or with 6+ years requirements.
- Staff / Principal / Lead (10+ years): Keywords specific to JDs titled Staff, Principal, Lead, or with strategy + influence-over-authority requirements.
Notice a missing keyword or stale entry?
We re-curate every 6 months, but if you spot something obviously wrong or missing, email hello@atsverification.com with the profession + your suggested addition + a link to a JD that supports it. If it checks out, we'll add it to the next refresh and credit you on the update note (with your permission).