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How to best represent one’s work in a non-academic resume?

In our March "how can we help you?" thread, a reader raised the following query:

I'm a fifth year graduate student who is getting ready to apply for non-academic jobs, and I am wondering how to best represent my work as a graduate student on a resume (as opposed to a CV). The resume will of course include the PhD and my work as a teaching assistant/instructor, but I am considering also including something like "Graduate Student Researcher" under work experience. I feel that the resume would otherwise not accurately reflect my work as a graduate student, but I am also worried that this might be dishonest, since I am not getting paid to do research. It is worth adding that the non-academic jobs I am most interested in are research-heavy.

I'm not sure, but given that "graduate student researcher" isn't an actual paid position (one is a student researcher), I would think listing that as work experience would be misleading. But how exactly to best present oneself is unclear to me.

What do you all think? It would be great to hear from people with "alt-ac" experience!

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7 responses to “How to best represent one’s work in a non-academic resume?”

  1. SLAC Associate

    For a non-academic resume, you should think less in terms of job titles and more in terms of the work you did and how its representative of your skills.
    So rather than expecting a title like “Grad Student Researcher” to do the work under Work Experience, you should list out the kinds of work you did as a grad student: taught classes of 40 students, assessed student written work, designed curriculum, conducted research projects, etc. And if you’re applying for a position where research skills are demanded, it may be valuable to have an entirely separate section titled “Research Experience” with individual bullets for specific research projects and the skills they illustrate (e.g., archive work, data collection, idea synthesis, etc.)
    UC Davis has a helpful Youtube video on translating your academic work to a non-academic CV:

    Reply
  2. Andrew Richmond

    I would just put your research work in the description you give of the job. E.g., on my old resume, in the brief bullet points under my job titles, one said something like: “Presented and published research in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience venues.”
    You might also distinguish between two different positions. Under the “Relevant Experience” section, or whatever you’re calling it, you could have two entries: “Instructor/TA/…”; and “PhD Candidate.” I don’t think it would be misleading at all to describe those as separate roles, and to outline your teaching work under the first and your research work under the second.

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  3. caution

    the trouble is you weren’t employed as a graduate student researcher while you were in a PhD UNLESS you were employed as such on someone’s grant. So you should not misrepresent what you did. Even if you are successful in getting away with it, it will catch up to you later. A number of German politicians have had their careers end abruptly for misrepresenting what they did.

    Reply
  4. sahpa

    I agree with the above that the title is not super important itself. Your PhD is both an education credential and work experience, so it makes sense for it to appear in both sections. As a PhD student, you did project management, research (development+design+execution), public speaking, teaching, feedback and instructional design (if you were ever a lecturer), and so on. These are all aspects of the work you did that are translatable to other jobs – hence why it’s important they’re on the resume – and should be bullets under that ‘job’, and they matter more than whatever title you give that job.
    As for the title itself, I think there is flexibility and you do not need to worry about being ‘dishonest’ just because you give it a descriptive title that might not be the default or official, exact title within academia. You should rather avoid titles that largely only have meaning within academia – e.g., ‘PhD Candidate’, which is very inside-baseball imo. Non-academics don’t know what it means to be a PhD candidate.

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  5. sahpa

    @caution: this feels like a difference of institutional/cultural setting. In Germany (where I infer you are), what you say is true and PhD students formally do their dissertations ‘on their own time’ (as I understand matters). In the US, however, this is very much a formal position with formal expectations/timelines/etc. And it is usually (in philosophy) ‘compensated’ in the form of stipends or tuition coverage, even setting aside salary for being a teaching assistant. There would be no misrepresentation at all in characterising it as work experience, in my opinion.

    Reply
  6. AP

    A “functional resume” might be a better way of emphasizing the value you can bring to an employer (googling around for a sample/model should help)?
    Basically, instead of listing tasks you’ve done under a job, you list them under certain general skills (e.g., “Teaching & Course Design,” “Project Management,” “Customer Service” etc). My understanding is that people with gaps typically use a functional resume, but it might be useful in your case.

    Reply
  7. Postdoc

    For what it’s worth:
    1. When I did my PhD in the UK, PhD candidates were advised to use the the title ‘Postgraduate researcher’ . Maybe that could work for OP? (Though, granted, as someone who stayed in the academy, I have never used that title myself…)
    2. I agree with sahpa’s reply to caution, and would want to emphasize it even more: in lots of countries, you are very clearly and explicitly employed as a researcher when you are a PhD student. As OP doesn’t say where they are based, it’s hard to know what would be appropriate here. But if their PhD is in, for example, Sweden or Norway, they would definitely count as employed as a PhD candidate.

    Reply

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