diff --git a/src/common/helper.js b/src/common/helper.js
index 45e4afe4..b3dea59b 100644
--- a/src/common/helper.js
+++ b/src/common/helper.js
@@ -1903,6 +1903,56 @@ async function getMemberGroups (userId) {
   return _.get(res, 'body')
 }
 
+/**
+ * Removes markdown and html formatting from given text
+ *
+ * @param {String} text formatted text
+ * @returns {String} cleaned words seperated by single space
+ */
+function removeTextFormatting (text) {
+  text = _.replace(text, /^(-\s*?|\*\s*?|_\s*?){3,}\s*$/gm, ' ')
+  text = _.replace(text, /^([\s\t]*)([*\-+]|\d+\.)\s+/gm, ' $1 ')
+  // Header
+  text = _.replace(text, /\n={2,}/g, '\n')
+  // Fenced codeblocks
+  text = _.replace(text, /~{3}.*\n/g, ' ')
+  // Strikethrough
+  text = _.replace(text, /~~/g, ' ')
+  // Fenced codeblocks
+  text = _.replace(text, /`{3}.*\n/g, ' ')
+  // Remove HTML tags
+  text = _.replace(text, /<[^>]*>/g, ' ')
+  // Remove setext-style headers
+  text = _.replace(text, /^[=-]{2,}\s*$/g, ' ')
+  // Remove footnotes
+  text = _.replace(text, /\[\^.+?\](: .*?$)?/g, ' ')
+  text = _.replace(text, /\s{0,2}\[.*?\]: .*?$/g, ' ')
+  // Remove images
+  text = _.replace(text, /!\[(.*?)\][[(].*?[\])]/g, ' $1 ')
+  // Remove inline links
+  text = _.replace(text, /\[(.*?)\][[(].*?[\])]/g, ' $1 ')
+  // Remove blockquotes
+  text = _.replace(text, /^\s{0,3}>\s?/g, ' ')
+  // Remove reference-style links
+  text = _.replace(text, /^\s{1,2}\[(.*?)\]: (\S+)( ".*?")?\s*$/g, ' ')
+  // Remove atx-style headers
+  text = _.replace(text, /^#{1,6}\s*([^#]*)\s*#{1,6}?$/gm, ' $1 ')
+  // Remove emphasis (repeat the line to remove double emphasis)
+  text = _.replace(text, /([*_]{1,3})(\S.*?\S{0,1})\1/g, ' $2 ')
+  text = _.replace(text, /([*_]{1,3})(\S.*?\S{0,1})\1/g, ' $2 ')
+  // Remove code blocks
+  text = _.replace(text, /(`{3,})(.*?)\1/gm, ' $2 ')
+  // Remove inline code
+  text = _.replace(text, /`(.+?)`/g, ' $1 ')
+  // Remove punctuation
+  text = _.replace(text, /[,"'?/\\]/g, ' ')
+  // Replace two or more newlines
+  text = _.replace(text, /\n/g, ' ')
+  // replace all whitespace characters with single space
+  text = _.replace(text, /\s\s+/g, ' ')
+  return text
+}
+
 module.exports = {
   getParamFromCliArgs,
   promptUser,
@@ -1961,5 +2011,6 @@ module.exports = {
   getUserByHandle,
   substituteStringByObject,
   createProject,
-  getMemberGroups
+  getMemberGroups,
+  removeTextFormatting
 }
diff --git a/src/services/TeamService.js b/src/services/TeamService.js
index 566262a3..867d958b 100644
--- a/src/services/TeamService.js
+++ b/src/services/TeamService.js
@@ -834,13 +834,17 @@ async function getSkillsByJobDescription (currentUser, data) {
   // unnecessary api calls which is extremely time comsuming.
   await _reloadCachedTopcoderSkills()
   // replace markdown tags with spaces
-  let description = _.replace(data.description, /[`|^[\]{}~/,:-]|#{2,}|<br>/gi, ' ')
-  // replace all whitespace characters with single space
-  description = _.replace(description, /\s\s+/g, ' ')
+  const description = helper.removeTextFormatting(data.description)
   // extract words from description
   let words = _.split(description, ' ')
   // remove stopwords from description
   words = _.filter(words, word => stopWords.indexOf(word.toLowerCase()) === -1)
+  // include consecutive two word combinations
+  const twoWords = []
+  for (let i = 0; i < words.length - 1; i++) {
+    twoWords.push(`${words[i]} ${words[i + 1]}`)
+  }
+  words = _.concat(words, twoWords)
   let foundSkills = []
   const result = []
   // try to match each word with skill names