MightyRecruiterDepending on your funeral home’s size, a mortician handles everything from transporting decedents to the mortuary to embalming the remains. As such, be clear on your mortician job description what you expect from a candidate who applies to your posting.
The usual required education is an associate degree in mortuary science from an American Board of Funeral Service Education-accredited program. The state you are located in alongside job responsibilities determines any additional education, licensing and internship needs. Ensure your candidates have completed a basic business law course alongside ethics, grief counseling and funeral service coursework.
Since your future employee will be dealing with people at a very sensitive time, make certain to stress compassion as a crucial quality on your mortician job description. Time management is also important to this position. Consult the example below for more details on writing a description that attracts the right candidates.
Mortician Job Summary
If you have a compassionate heart and want to help people during the worst time in their lives, then we want you as part of our team. We are a small funeral home, and we need a licensed mortician who has studied mortuary science and completed an internship. You will be crucial to all operations in our mortuary. We may call upon you to meet with families to counsel and discuss funeral arrangements or to embalm and prepare bodies for viewing and services. You will be a comfort to the grieving, and there is no job more rewarding than ensuring everything is okay during this difficult time, so the family and friends can have the closure they need.
Job Responsibilities
- Receive notification of deceased persons and arrange pick-ups from homes or hospitals and transport to mortuary, using in-house personnel or transportation service when calls come in
- Meet with families during scheduled appointments to comfort them and plan funeral arrangements, including which casket to select, where they would like the viewing and services, and whether to bury or cremate the remains
- Obtain information from the families, medical facilities and county to complete necessary legal documents, including burial permits and death certificates for each decedent
- Ensure all arrangements for funerals are in place, including obituary notices in requested newspapers; scheduling the facilities for the services; securing flowers, clergymen, soloists and organists; arranging for procession to the cemetery; scheduling interment with the cemetery
- Embalm or oversee the embalming of decedents and all dressing, cosmetics and casketing to prepare bodies for viewings and funeral services
- Transport decedents to funeral services and set up the facilities, including casket, flowers and any displays as requested by families
- Greet and seat attendees, provide guidance to clergies, soloists and organists during funeral services and direct attendees on how to proceed to cemeteries at conclusion of services
- Transport bodies and flowers to cemeteries and set up gravesides for local burials, or prepare bodies for cremation or shipments to out-of-state cemeteries
Job Skills and Qualifications
Reqiured:
- Associate degree in mortuary science or equivalent from an ABFSE-accredited program
- 21 years of age or older
- Completed one-to-three-year internship, or willingness to complete one-to-three-year internship
- Successful completion of state licensing exam
Preferred:
- Previous embalming experience
- Previous cosmetic experience
- Database and software experience
Mortician Job Responsibilities
Most qualified applicants for mortician positions are already trained and certified. For this reason, you may want to focus your mortician job description on the specific demands or features of a particular funeral home. It is important that you provide applicants for this position with a clear sense of the requirements for this job and the duties that you expect them to perform on a regular basis.
Set forth the daily tasks and broader duties of this job in an organized and well-written job responsibilities section, the lengthiest portion of the posting. You can use bullet points and include no more than eight distinct items to make this section of a mortician job description easy for jobseekers to skim. Commencing each line in the list with a unique action verb can help to maintain the focus on the immediate requirements of the role.
You might start by considering the following general mortician job responsibilities:
- Consult with families and friends of the deceased to schedule suitable funeral services
- Arrange for burial or cremation and perform embalming when requested
- Provide information on memorial service packages, caskets and other products
- Obtain information needed to prepare and file burial permits or other official forms
- Host information sessions about end-of-life preparations and funeral planning
Mortician Job Specifications
As mentioned above, a mortician job description is likely to attract applications from trained and certified candidates. It is still important to make sure that the qualifications and skills section of the description makes the official, minimum and preferred requirements for the position clear. Keep in mind that certain states have legal requirements with regard to the baseline qualifications you should include.
You may find it helpful to break up the list of specifications into required skills and preferred qualifications. This distinction can help to reduce the number of applicants that do not meet the basic or legal minimum requirements and encourage those who do to address other relevant areas of experience in their resume.
If you are unsure about which credentials to include, work on this part of a mortician job description with a funeral home director or another professional in the field. These specialists should have experience working with qualified morticians and may be able to offer guidance regarding appropriate qualifications.
Here are a few mortician job specifications suitable for a description:
- Associate or bachelor’s degree in mortuary science from an accredited program
- Background in chemistry applicable to embalming and burial preparation processes
- Exceptional customer service skills and capacity to console and counsel
- Clerical skills including data entry, record-keeping and filing
