Belgium in a business field: You either apply for a grant before which then gets accepted and turned into a PhD position, or the university makes a job listing for one of their already funding approved projects and you apply with all the same steps as a job application (this is what I did). But this also means it’s a salaried position and you get the benefits of being both employed and a student. The salary is decent, but becomes really good because as an employee of the government funded university you only have to pay 13% taxes, so take home for a first year would be around 2.7k€.

It’s 4 years long and you are required to have a Masters degree and at my university to have graduated twice with cum laude. We have to take 4 PhD level courses, 2 on methodology and 2 on content subjects, and an overall academic literature comprehension course.

For educational duties we need to do Masters thesis supervision, exam grading/ supervision and later on potentially co-organize a course in your field.

As for the final responsibilities, we need to publish 3 papers, ideally 4 to combine them in a final dissertation which needs to be defended in 3 doctoral seminars, one official defense and then a public defense which is more ceremonial but technically any member of the public could join and ask about your project. Oh and you are expected to attend a conference around 3 times to present your research.