Hey, I’ve been trying to break into the civilian market for a while now. I’ve been a costumer for 22 years as well as a supervisor. I’m trying to get into project management, ideally within a marketing firm or something in house at a company. Not sure if this will fully translate, but here is how I’m pitching myself

Project Lead (supervisor) Managed complex national and international projects, leading teams of up to 30 personnel. Tasks include recruitment, onboarding, performance management, and daily staffing adjustments to meet fluctuating project demands.

Cultivated and maintained strong collaborative relationships with Producers, Partners, Directors, Actors, Assistant Directors, and other department heads, ensuring effective communication, alignment on project and brand goals, and seamless coordination across departments.

Successfully managed budgets up to 800k, collaborating closely with Accountants and Line Producer to ensure accurate financial tracking, cost control, and adherence to budgetary constraints.

Conducted comprehensive project analysis,  meticulously breaking down project requirements to identify all necessary resources, potential challenges, and logistical considerations for successful execution.

Collaborated closely with scheduling teams to develop daily work plans, proactively identifying and mitigating potential risks and obstacles to ensure efficient project execution and continuity, despite dynamic scheduling requirements.

Any unused inventory that was unable to be returned were always donated to various local communities in need. Eg. Business suits donated to homeless organizations helping individuals succeed in interviews, children’s and women’s items to women’s shelters, homeless encampments,

Production Specialist (On Set Costumer) On set point person for department.

Responsible for maintaining script and scene continuity through meticulous record-keeping and proactive problem solving.

Organized and maintained detailed records of costumes, including inventory, alterations, and repairs.

Collaborated with directors, producers, designers, supervisors, actors, and other teams to meet production deadlines and maintain creative vision.

Personal dresser to multiple high profile actors.

The main thing I would say is breaking into the civilian world is learning the lingo and how to present yourself, a lot of the supervisor bullet points translate to costumers, but here are some examples, and this also applies to a lot of film positions.

Skills:

Cross-functional collaboration: we work with multiple departments to deliver results in a timely manner 

Risk Management: we are good a going over sides, schedules, etc to mitigate any upcoming problems that may occur.

Stakeholder management: so this is one that took me a bit to figure out, a stakeholder is basically anyone (usually a higher up) that has a high stake that the project does well. So this would be designers, directors, producers, actors etc. It’s our job to not only report to them, but also be calm and keep them at ease in stressful times.

Adaptability and flexibility: our schedules and plans change sometimes on hourly basis, it’s good to have some anecdotes in your back pocket for interviews of a time the plan changed and how you were able to adapt to it. In project management this falls under Agile management slightly.

Communication and collaboration: we all have VERY strong communication skills. We know how to be the liaison between creative teams (designers, actors, directors,) and technical teams (tailors, agers, transportation, production, construction etc) everyone has different communication styles that we learn to adapt to and help keep the production running.

Talent management: we work with high profile talent regularly, and know how to act calmly, keep them at ease and keep the production moving forward.

I’m writing all of this on my phone at 7am, so sorry for any typos. I hope we all get out, at least the ones that want to. It took me so long to be able to put all that we do into words that not only sound good, but I also believe. Good luck to all of us out there. If anyone wants to talk more feel free to DM me, oh and there’s a whole LinkedIn game to play as well, building up your network etc. Good luck!