How should I treate the auto-suggested skills tags in online job application portals (Ex: workday)?
This may be better asked in an HR / job hunt subreddit. Just let me know.
I have had to apply to several jobs through application software that auto-suggests skills based on my resume. These skills are frequently nonsense words, specific software that isn't on my resume, or extremely generic to the degree that I worry they are irrelevant.
Obviously, software that I have never used should be removed, but what I should do with the other tags depends on how they are used on the backend.
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The software / hiring company generates tags based on the job description and the suggested tags are pulled from this group. The software then autosorts applications based on matches with the tags from the job description.
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The software is ran for the job description and the application separately. The software then autosorts applications based on matches.
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An indivdual from the company manually sorts applications based on skill tags that they choose without influence from the software.
With options one and two, nonsense and generic topics should be left in to increase the match rate. For option three, the tags should be removed if the sorting individual can also see the nonsense skills they didn't select, but the tags should be kept if the individual chooses to filter by generic topics.
If you have used one of these tools to hire or frequently get interview offers after applying through them, what do you like to see from application skill tags or what did you do to get an offer? Also, how important are the skill tags?
context: recently graduated engineering bachelor's in USA
Posted Mar 4, 2026, 10:43 PM UTC