Funeral Director CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a funeral director who is also a qualified embalmer, with eight years as a director and the last five in a family-owned firm with two branches. The name and firms are invented. If you are a funeral arranger or do not embalm, keep the layout and change what you claim.

Funeral service hiring is driven by training and trust. An owner is deciding whether you can be left alone with a grieving family at ten at night. Four things carry the decision.

• Qualifications. What you hold and from whom: NAFD or other funeral directing qualifications, an embalming qualification if you embalm, and whether you are a director, an arranger, an embalmer or all three. There is no licence in most of the UK, so be exact.
• What you can cover unsupervised. Arrangements, embalming, restorative work, removals, cremation paperwork, funeral plans. Owners staff around coverage.
• Volume and setting. Funerals a year, number of branches, whether the firm has its own chapels of rest, whether it serves particular communities or faith traditions.
• Compliance instincts. The CMA price rules, registration and cremation paperwork, preparation room safety and identification procedures. A director who is casual about any of these is a liability.

“Qualifications, call volume and what you can run on your own. That is the whole screen. And I look for one specific thing: does the CV mention the price rules and paperwork deadlines. If it does, that person has been trusted with the front of the house, not just carrying flowers.”

There is no licence to be a funeral director in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, so employers judge you on training and experience. Many firms belong to the NAFD or SAIF, which set codes of practice, and the NAFD runs qualifications such as the Diploma in Funeral Directing. Embalming is a separate skill, usually shown by the British Institute of Embalmers (BIE) qualification. Scotland has its own regulation, including an inspector of funeral directors and a statutory code of practice. Write exactly what you hold.

• Family service: arrangement meetings, funeral plan sales and administration, aftercare and grief support referral
• Technical: embalming, arterial and cavity treatment, restorative work, cosmetics, dressing and coffining, cremation paperwork
• Logistics: on-call removals, transfers, vehicle and premises preparation, chapel of rest and service setup, cortège and graveside direction
• Documentation: registration guidance, green form and cremation application forms, repatriation paperwork, Funeral Expenses Payment claims, Tell Us Once
• Compliance: CMA standardised price list and price display rules, cremation identification procedures, COSHH (formaldehyde) and infection control, inspection and audit readiness
• Community: death notice writing, tribute pages and webcasting, minister, celebrant and cemetery relationships, work across faith traditions and cultural practices
• Software: funeral management and case systems (name the one your firm uses), online arrangement and webcasting tools

The human skills here are the job, not an add-on, so give them evidence. "Family satisfaction survey scores averaged 4.8 out of 5 across three years" or "served 40 families a year from three faith communities with funerals conducted in their traditions" says more than "compassionate and empathetic".

Funeral directors take on trainees constantly because the job is learned under supervision. What an owner wants to know is whether you can be around families and whether you will hold up to the hours.

• Log and state your case counts. Embalming cases assisted, arrangement meetings observed or led, removals handled, funerals worked. Nobody expects these to be large; they expect them to be counted.
• Name your course and who runs it (for example an NAFD qualification), your progress towards an embalming qualification if you are training as an embalmer, and any trade association your firm belongs to.
• List any funeral service operative, bearer, driver or receptionist work at a firm, with the number of funerals.
• Include work that shows composure with the public in hard moments: hospital, hospice, care home, emergency services, clergy, social work, customer service.
• State your availability plainly: nights, weekends, on-call rota, bank holidays. This trade runs on it.
• Add a full UK driving licence, a clean record and comfort driving a hearse or limousine.

The common mistake is filling the page with sentiment. Two paragraphs about honouring life and serving with dignity tells an owner nothing they cannot assume, and it pushes the useful facts to page two. Write plainly and let the numbers show that you carry the work well.

• One page early in your career, two once you have 10 years or management or multi-branch history.
• Put your qualifications block near the top, immediately after the personal statement.
• Give funeral numbers and branch count for every firm, since that is the reader's yardstick.
• No photo and no date of birth on a UK CV. In the US the role usually needs a state funeral director or embalmer licence and a mortuary science degree, and the document is a resume.
• Adverts appear under funeral director, funeral arranger, funeral service operative, embalmer and branch manager. Use the advert's title in your headline.
• Say plainly that you accept on-call rotas and weekend work. Availability is often the deciding factor between two qualified candidates.