Occupation

Funeral director

Funeral directors arrange and run funerals: meeting families, handling the deceased, filing legal paperwork, and coordinating everything the service requires. It is a logistics and compliance job carried out under emotional pressure and to an exact schedule, with no room to be late or wrong. Calls come at any hour and the work involves direct contact with the dead.

Also known as: Undertaker · Mortician · Funeral service director · Funeral arranger

Saving keeps the career family and this occupation as your private target role on this device.

Occupation content

Part of Community, social and public services

A visual day in the work

What the work involves

  1. Meet families to plan the service, burial or cremation, and associated arrangements

  2. Transfer and care for the deceased and prepare them for viewing or the service

  3. Complete death registrations, permits, and cemetery or crematorium documentation

  4. Coordinate clergy or celebrants, venues, transport, flowers, and notices

  5. Direct the funeral itself and manage the order of events on the day

  6. Handle accounts, contracts, and prearrangement records for the firm

Entry-route stepper

How people commonly enter

  1. A college diploma or programme in funeral service, funeral directing, or mortuary science

  2. An apprenticeship or supervised traineeship with a licensed funeral home, where that route exists

  3. Licensing or registration with the funeral services regulator, which is required in many jurisdictions and often follows an examination and supervised practice

Typical training: Certificate or college diploma

Licensing: Regulated in most jurisdictions. Confirm the current requirement with the regulator in your province, state, or country.

Work-context map

Typical work context

  • Public facing
  • Shift work
  • High responsibility
  • Varied work
  • Physically active

Public facing · Shift work · High responsibility · Varied work · Physically active

Related interests

  • Social (helping)
  • Enterprising (leading)
  • Conventional (organizing)

Social (helping) · Enterprising (leading) · Conventional (organizing)

Related aptitude preparation

These are preparation links only. They do not measure eligibility for this occupation and no score here qualifies or disqualifies anyone.

Skills to practise

Practice suites

Related learning

Family-level learning links for Community, social and public services.

Official sources

Labour-market facts such as pay and employment projections are not reproduced here. Open an official source below for figures, with its own geography and reference period.

Labour-market context (not part of exploration match)

This is broad family-level context for Community, social and public services in Canada, not a figure for Funeral director. It does not affect matching scores and is not an eligibility determination.

This is a broad Community, social and public services family. Explore the official profile for the chosen occupation; entry education and training can differ within the family.

Canada Job Bank Career Planning · Canada · Current official profile; consult source for its release period

Community, social and public services: education pathways

Some roles in Community, social and public services may be regulated. Confirm whether the specific role requires registration, certification, or a jurisdiction-specific licence.

Canada Job Bank Career Planning · Canada · Current official profile; consult source for its release period

Community, social and public services: licensing

Explore Canada's official sources

Find jobs

These are live, user-controlled searches on each source's own site for “ Funeral director”. Novus Learn does not fetch, store, or rank these results, and job availability never changes your exploration match score.

Report a change or missing information

Related occupations

Learn → Practise → Prepare → Apply

Continue from this occupation

Choose a learning action because it supports the work, not because a test score predicts career suitability.

When you get to the application

Novus Learn stops at preparation. These two Novus tools cover the paperwork, and like this site they run entirely in your browser. Nothing you upload to them leaves your device.

Report a change or missing information

Consent version 2026-08-21.1

Cookie preferences