<p>Hello. I originally posted this in the career and employment section, people suggested to post here, so here goes ----</p>
<p>When applying for jobs, often times they require you to fill in "Years of experience"</p>
<p>I will be fresh PhD graduate, and have done a 9-month co-op during my undergrad. So my question is what is the appropriate answer to put for my "years of experience"?</p>
<p>I think my 9-month co-op experience can be rounded up and count as 1 year experience. And I have heard that PhD's 5 years is equivalent to 5 years of working experience. During the 5 years, the first to second year I mainly focused on coursework, and later years is fully dedicated to my research project. So even though I have not worked any real permanent full time job, looks my answer could be from 0 all the way up to 6 (5+1).</p>
<p>Many people consider their time in a PhD program as time spent gaining experience (like a job) so if you spent 5 years in graduate school, I would put 5 years of experience. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong.</p>
<p>I would generally put my PhD into the education section, not work experience. If I want to claim work experience for specific things I did during my PhD time (e.g. teaching), I’d only count the time that I actually had that specific role.</p>
<p>The time you spent in your PhD does not count as full-time work experience, and you should not count that.</p>
<p>If you had a research or teaching assistantship, you can count that as part-time research experience. For example, 20 hours a week is half-time. But you only do it during the academic year, too. I would just list on your resume the semesters in which you taught. In an application that asked, if you TAed or were an RA for a half-time appointment, I’d divide the number of years in half.</p>
<p>If your co-op was full time, then I would count that as a year.</p>
<p>I should clarify… My reply was based on the assumption that the op’s field of study was science. I was thinking more along the lines of lab experience.</p>