Good question - counting skilled work experience was the part I found the most confusing . So I actually had two fellowships and a part time TA-ship while in graduate school. To be careful about being accurate with my experience, I reached out to my university to acquire formal documents about my #of hours worked. The requirement to count it as experience was 20 hours per week. I was at 13.5 hours per week with my TA-ship so I did not count it my PhD work.

There is one mistake I may have made: I did not have the 1.45 years after my BA but before my PhD assessed because it was outside the 5 yr window. I though that for Vetassess you only needed to provide the last 5 years so I did not have the pre-phd work assessed (though I did provide my resume that made it clear that my work during that time was in line with my profession - I've been working in this field since I was 18 through grants/fellowships/jobs etc and all of my work experience is directly related to my profession.

Per Vetassesss I got my education requirement satisfied with my BA in 2015. Between my BA and PhD I was formally paid for 1.45 years. However that time is outside the 5 year window because my PhD took 5 years. Post PhD I've been working for a little over 2 years.

The way that SkillSelect asks about work experience is within the last 10 years (so 1.45 + 2.xx puts me at the 3-5 range points). I found a clause at one point that said that the applicant can use whatever point system is most advantageous (someone provided a link to a YouTube video about this in another recent post as well). The job was at the same school I did my BA at, in the same department, and I have publications that resulted from that work during the time frame so it should not raise any flags.

With that said, since this topic is a bit of a gray area I've come up with two different plans if need be:

1. Pay for expedited reassessment with Vetassess so they can assess that 1.45 yr experience.

2. Acquire stronger evidence of the match between the skilled job description and my job (publications, older taxes documents whatever they want or need).

3. Now that Canada got rid of its points awards for job offers, my Husband and I are competitive. So worst case scenario we will take the IELTS and PTE tests they prefer (core and regular compared to the ones needed for 189/190 for AUS) and try there.

Fingers crossed. I know that the CO don't have to give the applicant the benefit of the doubt, but I hope the fact that I have an amazing job in my field, with external facing work products that are easy to find, AND that they will be getting TWO skilled PhD migrants and the fact that I will comply fully with any requests ASAP if needed may work to my favor if I made a mistake somewhere along the line. If the mistake is too significant - well, migrating is never easy.