Keywords used to be called buzzwords. My clients often ask me about keywords as if there is some clandestine group of human resource managers who secretly devise to trick job seekers by disqualifying applicants who, although meeting the qualifications, are missing the magic keywords. It really is simple to figure out keywords. There are a few ways to do it. The best way to figure out what keywords you should have in your résumé is to look at the job announcement itself. This is especially true of federal job announcements. You should pay particular attention to the section that describes the duties. As you read, highlight all of the technical terms used. For example, here is an excerpt of a federal government job announcement with the keywords in all caps: "Monitors progress toward ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS, EVALUATES and makes proper adjustments to IMPROVE THE PROGRAM. IDENTIFIES PROBLEMS, determines accuracy and relevance of information and uses SOUND JUDGMENT to generate and evaluate alternatives and to MAKE RECCOMENDATIONS to improve programming. If this is the job you have [...]