Yes, my site has a cheesy word search. There's a very good reason for it, too.
I believe this is the best way to help people understand why the strengths and qualifications they think are strongest are keeping them unemployed.
What companies want to see in the Skills section is alignment with the hard and soft skills in the posting. Not what you think qualifies you. If you have experience in the job, what the employer embedded in the posting is also part of your qualifications. It's just not what you think to emphasize.
Can you find the keywords that will get you an interview?
Below, you will see the Skills section from a resume and a partial job posting. Pretend this is your resume's Skills section. Skim both items, then use the word search like you're tailoring your resume to the posting. Be mindful of which words you see first, especially whether they turn orange or green after you select them.
Words are arranged vertically and horizontally. After you've selected up to 5 words, hit "Reveal all hidden words," then continue reading.
Below, you will see a word search. Please select the first few words you see. Words are arranged vertically and horizontally.
After you've selected up to 3 words, hit "Reveal all hidden words," then continue reading.
Director, Revenue Operations
Mid-size SaaS company, 200–500 employees
What you'll do:
Own pipeline health, velocity, and conversion metrics across all segments
Design and enforce revenue operations standards, including data compliance and CRM hygiene
Build dashboards and reporting that give leadership real-time visibility into sales performance
Partner with Sales, Marketing, and CS to eliminate handoff failures and accelerate deal execution
Develop the operational playbooks that turn high-performing individuals into a repeatable, scalable team
Act as a mentor to sales managers and senior ICs on process, pipeline management, and performance accountability
What we're looking for:
7+ years in revenue operations, sales operations, or a related GTM function
Demonstrated ability to drive execution across complex cross-functional environments
Strong command of pipeline management, forecasting methodology, and sales metrics
Experience building compliance frameworks for data governance and process adherence
Track record of using metrics to identify problems before they become misses
Experienced mentor to sales managers and senior ICs on process, pipeline management, and performance accountability
If you'd rather explore the site instead, click here.
A fun-but-serious word search that will help you FINALLY understand why you don't get interviews for jobs you're qualified for. Assume that you have experience in every skill you find.
Are The First Words You Spot Professional Strengths or Posting Keywords?
Find as many hidden skills as you can. Click and drag to select at least 3, then hit "Reveal all hidden words." The results will help you see that applicants and employers define "qualified" very differently. After you've found (or revealed) all the words... keep reading.
Click a starting letter, drag to the end of the word, and release. Words run left-right and top-bottom.
Here's why only "Sales" and "Mentor" appeared in both lists — and why it matters for your resume.
Most people find professional strengths first: Innovate, Strategic, Thinker, Leader, Visionary, Mentor, Sales. They feel immediately familiar because they're the words you use to describe yourself, the strengths you're proud of, the way you'd introduce your own career to someone.
The posting keywords — Revenue, Operations, Execution, Pipeline, Compliance, Metrics — are harder to spot. Not because they're hidden differently. Because they don't feel like you. For the purposes of this exercise, they are also among your professional strengths; they just aren't what you think of first.
That's not a character flaw. It's how human brains work. And it's exactly what happens when you sit down to tailor a qualifications-based resume to a job posting. Qualifications-based means that the Skills section contains what you believe you're best at within your line of work. This WAS how both applicants and employers defined "qualified..." starting in the 1990s.
Around 2022, employers changed their definition to "this specific list of hard and soft skills I've put into the posting."
Applicants are still using the 1990s-era definition. That's why they can't get interviews and employers think there's a candidate shortage.
Your eyes find the words in the posting that match your professional strengths because it's what you built your Skills section and resume around. They're rarely the skills the employer actually needed to be in your Skills section; namely, the posting keywords.
THIS disconnect (it's called confirmation bias), paired with employers' recent change in how they define "qualified," is why you aren't getting interviews.
Thankfully, the fix is simple. Once you implement it, you'll start interviewing as soon as you put your new resume to work.
What this looks like in a real resume
Below is another before-and-after example from a real client. The client, who couldn't get an interview through online applications, gave me three similar postings in their field that represented the 1,000+ jobs they'd applied to during the 12 months before we met. When we mapped their current resume's Skills section against what the postings actually required, this is what we found:
75% of the words the client put in their Skills section appeared in none of the three postings. And nine skills the postings consistently required — including soft skills like Relationship Building and Influencing without Authority — never made it into the Skills section at all.
This client had real experience in every one of those required skills. Confirmation bias made them invisible.
Why this keeps happening no matter how many times you rewrite
Every time you sit down to tailor your resume, you read the posting through the same filter: your own professional strengths, which are based upon that obsolete definition of "qualified." AI tools make it worse — you tell the tool about your strengths, and it produces a polished document organized around them. The interpretation is still wrong. It just sounds more confident.
This is called the interpretation gap — the distance between what you read in the posting and what the employer actually embedded in it. It's the reason qualified candidates are invisible in this job market. Not because they lack experience, but because their definition of "qualified" doesn't match hiring managers'.
The gap is fixable... but not through rewriting, polishing, or a different format. You fix it by reverse-engineering the postings you normally apply to. This reveals the right words for your Skills section.
"I went from less than 2% return calls on applications to nearly 40% return. In this market."
Lori M. — 3 weeks after implementing CareerGPSLori's shift — from 2% to 40% in three weeks — happened because her Skills section finally contained the language embedded in the postings she typically applied to instead of her professional strengths.
That's the only change that matters. And it's the one no template, AI builder, or resume rewrite will make for you. It's only available through the CareerGPS system.
Melissa Kelley CPRW, CEMC, is one of the few career professionals who can promise you that her work gets interviews and offers. Why? She tracks metrics like time to first interview (2 - 4 weeks) and salary increase (average $25K).
Learn more and discover how to work with Melissa →
Melissa Kelley, CPRW, CEMC, CEMP · 2024 Career Innovator Award Recipient
Named Contributor: Resumes for Dummies, 9th Edition
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