Probably a lengthy post ahead, you have been warned.
For 17 years now I've been with the same field (funeral service) and with the same company (StoneMor). I started part-time in Allentown, and would at some point move into the apartment above one of the funeral homes. A good number of you had visited that apartment over the years. Eventually I would pursue schooling to become a funeral director, and I completed my internship and my early years as a director at that same funeral home. Eventually a position within the company but at another funeral home came up. So I accepted a big pay jump and used that to anchor my fiance and I buying our first house (and thus far only) house together. I began working primarily in Plymouth Meeting at our funeral home there, but also occasionally at the other location in Huntingdon Valley. Those locations are the continuation of a business that lays claim to being America's oldest continuously operating funeral home, which is pretty cool. In 2019, at age 33, I interviewed for and got the position of managing those two locations. It was a ton of work taking over, especially split between two locations, and just as things where getting settled COVID hit, and it's been staffing issues on top of many other issues throughout the last two years. Still, by all major inter-company metrics my two funeral homes improved dramatically during my two years at the helm.
I'm extremely proud of that, but while at every major step of my career I've soft-tested other employment avenues I can honestly say that I truly think I'm on my way out at this point. It's gotten to a point where dealing with employees, dealing with issues on every level, and constantly feeling pressure from the consumer base up and the corporate end down I'm really not in a great place mentally. Over the past few months I've looked into a few different options, but with nothing serious coming to fruition. I was even looking at some random jobs completely outside my profession, just for a fresh start. I'm at the point where I'm completely happy to take less money in order to cut down my commute a bit and to lessen my stress and put me back into a better headspace. I'm hopeful I finally found that position.
There is a funeral home closer to me (30-35 minutes as opposed to 45-60 on my current commute) that has three family members running it. I had a phone interview on Wednesday with one of them and a follow up in person interview the next day with the other two. The more the position and their situation has sat with me the more hopeful I am that this works out. It would be a big leap of faith for me to go from corporate to family owned, while also going from manager back to pure funeral director, but I'm ready to make that jump with these folks. Thursday night following the in person interview I emailed a couple of follow up questions and when they answered back they told me they hoped to finish the interview process in 7-10 days. It's only been 3 days, but every time my email dings I get anxious wondering if I'm going to be hearing something one way or the other.
Been a long, long, long time, if ever, I've felt this kind of pressure post-interview, and looking back I'm hoping all was well. Generally things were casual, and I worry maybe too much so, but it really felt as if the interview was less interview and more shop talk among peers, as we were all just guys trying to run our respective funeral homes. I worry about how my comments about how I wanted to cut back might be perceived, but I can say I really went in with full honestly on topics, good or bad, and I hope that is appreciated. If their search for directors is anything like mine it's extremely hard to even get applicants, so I can reasonably hope there are going to be few qualified applicants. I've posted about it before, but right now in my field it's a job seeker's market, and I could absolutely find another job in the next month if I wanted, but finding the right job is a bit more difficult.
Last year aside, with heavy pandemic traffic, I can hope to serve 300 families a year among two facilities. In an ideal situation it's me and four other directors, so 60 families per person on average. To help with that, and it's limited help on our day to day are two full time administrators. But in a week I'm going to be down to myself and two directors, one of which is a few weeks in, and no new hires in site. In that situation we're looking at 100 a families a year, with minimal support staff, which isn't sustainable.
Where I'm trying to go they see 400 families a year, but I'd be the seventh full time director. That's 57 families a year on average, which is lower than my current situation, even when at optimal staffing levels, which never seems to happen. And on top of that they have 5-6 full time support staff that do a ton of items that our funeral directors typically do, which greatly lowers the load on the directors.
So yeah, just give some good vibes in hoping I didn't fuck things up too bad when interviewing.
Topic: Job Interviewing - Do's and Don'ts (Read 73708 times)
