sales representative

service advisor

animal advancement specialist

funeral director

directeur de magasin

Service-Corporation-International

SCI apparently prides itself on Service Excellence. Only the best for their families. That is until it costs them money and then their words turn to lies. 
They will train you to only provide for the family what they need, but by the same token you will be chastised for a low UP-SELL rate. The company will use cardboard cremation caskets that can be unsafe to use as they like to buckle when in the cooler for a few days. Decedents have litterally fallen out of this cardboard caskets or the caskets have buckled in the process of pushing them into the crematory. Catching fire while half of it is still outside the crematory. But these caskets cost the company $17 and in turn are sold to our families for $225.00  So they are not going anywhere anytime soon. 
Antiquated equipment that didn't do the job from the beginning. Rat infested funeral homes with collapsing ceilings, mold and asbestos with no desire to fix them. But charging families full price for using their outdated  facilitates. dilapidated Hearse that Priests have actually commented on and laughed at.  Lifting equipment in the morgues is not adequate. Staff have been injured before in the past and decedents have fallen off shelves and lifts. Management will state that these incidents happened because help wasn't obtained. But when you are short staffed the majority of the time, . . . . . you are expected to do your job regardless. Watch your back with this company. Problematic employees always get recognition and the perks and their jobs never in jeopardy. The employees that pour their heart and sole in to this business and wear themselves out just get fired and replaced.  Speaking from YEARS of working experience with them . . . .  You are truly just a number with SCI and absolutely expendable at anytime for any reason!  Employee incentives are practically nonexistent, and you better have a working spouse or roommate because the SCI wage is NEVER enough to get ahead.

I started with SCI as an apprentice and was hired on afterwards as a licensed funeral director in the Greater Toronto Area, working for them a total of two years.

Every manager I worked under was overburdened with the work of three people, and consistently underpaid. Most were abrasive and short-tempered, but what do you expect after being overworked and underappreciated for a decade.

Management and employees were constantly moved between cities (e.g. Pickering to Brampton) in short timeframes of one or two years.

I was given the wrong chapel location information before my start date, and was told the day before my start that I would actually be working on the opposite side of the city. It had always been their intention for me to work there, the initial location was an error. Because management was so disjointed and spread thin over a wide area, miscommunications like this were very common.

When I was hired as a full time employee, HR never had me sign an employment agreement. I mentioned this during my exit interview, and the person who conducted the interview from an office in BC was speechless. I was young and didn't realize at the time how erroneous this was. Also, what is the point of conducting an exit interview inter-province when the industry's processes and regulations are so region specific? Does that really give the impression SCI wants to learn anything at all from this opportunity?

There are too many specific examples of how poorly their chapels and care centres are operated. SCI left zero impression that they care about their employees, or the communities they serve. But hey, at least they're not Arbor, right?

Everybody will die but very few are willing to talk about it. Out of the few willing to talk about it, you need to get sales out of it. It's not an easy sales job where your product could sell by itself. A typical day consist of conference calls, weekly meeting, presentation, park tours and phone night. 

I learned about the importance of pre-planning and how to become a top sales. The company have many different types of training. And to sell a difficult product such as funeral, you do need a lot of training.

The current management put a lot of stress on making phone calls, getting 2 appointments per day. A lot of time, you just can't get 2 appointments per day especially when you are new. If you can't get 2 appointments per day, you need to keep going back to the office to make phone calls. A lot of management stress. It's almost like a tele-marketing job. 

The hardest part of the job is actually to make sales. For experience people, they have a large customer base and referral. But when you are brand new, it's extremely difficult. Lucky, they pay base salary to cover your basic. However, if you are not able to make sales, this position will become a minimum wage job. Depending on the months and your luck, even experience sales could end up zero sale for the month.

The most enjoyable part of the job is learning how to present funeral and cemetery to people. It's a difficult subject and it take a lot of skills to present and motivating people to buy.

I've been a licensed funeral service professional practising in good standing in Canada for over a decade... 

Service Corporation International / Dignity Memorial is 99% corrupt from the ground up. Senior management carelessly toy with the livelihood of employees by purposely setting them up to fail, then engaging in constructive dismissal, or terminating them WITHOUT cause!

The VAST MAJORITY of the training and managerial staff of Service Corporation International / Dignity Memorial in Canada are OUTRAGEOUSLY under-qualified and woefully neglectful of their duties.

Alternatives exist...

NEVER work for these amateurs!
NEVER use their lousy funeral homes!

Service Corporation International / Dignity Memorial ACTIVELY and SECRETELY induces superior talent from other funeral firms with the (false) promise of higher pay and more professional flexibility. 

They will use you for what you're worth to them: attracting people (especially the bereaved) from your community for advance planning or at-time-of-need funeral revenue streams, and then callously discard of you when they feel you've served your public relations purpose.

Heed the warning of an accomplished funeral service industry insider: save yourself enormous (additional) grief by neither working for, nor using, Service Corporation International / Dignity Memorial.

Just look at all of the unresolved complaints lodged against them with your local Better Business Bureau... 

STAY AWAY!!

I had to wait 6 months to be paid. 
Very poor IT support. 90's Laptops at the office for entering leads, appointment and processing sales.  Have to buy your own electronic device to do your sale work. Lack of training: limited to memorize a script and reading of non updated documents. High pressure for sale to your family and friends. No support at all for regular expenses needed for pre-sales and sell. Office: dirty, dusty, only one washroom m/f together for 52 peoples  (Forest  Lawn) and small (1.2 m wide) cubicle, stinky kitchen, just to say the less.
Imposible to reach sale bar. Even if you make your job properly, and for any reason your client contact the company for asking discount, you lose your sale. Totally crazy.  They are not what they say they are. The most expensive funeral services and cemetery properties in the country, hard to sale because lower prices of competitors.

When I first started at SCI, the culture and the management was not great to be honest, it had a bad reputation, the pay and culture were not great, I did think about leaving several times, but over the past 10 years it has greatly improved. The leadership team really listens, there are struggles with all companies but they are striving to make improvements, they have yearly focus groups and round table discussions and have improved with training, salary, holidays and life balance. There is a real initiative to listen to their employees and make changes. They now offer health benefits to part time staff, compensation has increased and the toxic style of management is being weeded out. Their training programs for personal development I have not seen anywhere else, they invest in their employees. I recently finished a leadership mentor program and EQ training and coaching that has helped in my personal and profesional life. I would recomend them to anyone looking to be seen and heard in their workplace. 

A typical day at work is busy from the get-go and busy to the very end.
I've learned that there's more to life than micro-managers, extremely long days, watching the clock tick-tock, listening to salespeople banter about how much they make from commissions, and some less than ideal administration staff to work alongside.

The workplace culture seems to be leaning to one ethnic society more than a multicultural environment; some people have mentioned that there may be workplace ethics that should be considered.

Every job takes getting used to. There are American and Canadian based staff at some cemetery locations. Local staff seem to be unionized, and the American staff don't seem to be unionized (and frankly don't care), so it gets to be stale.

The most enjoyable part of the job is leaving on a Friday evening, and hopefully spending time with friends on the weekends. I'm young and I just know that there are better suited jobs out there without having to wear black all day long.

Dealing with grieving families can put a damper on your personal life. Sure, you get used to it, but it's a tough job in this service area.

A typical day is very busy we see a lot of families, Everyday you learn something new and your team is right there to help you through whatever you need. 
my management team are the best I have ever worked for, I am not talking as a whole of SCI , but as in the location I work at. They are generous with their time, they are always thoughtful and nothing is below their paygrade. 
Our families always say that they come here because someone had recommended them us to us because the staff will do whatever we can to accommodate. And that is because we are a family, including our managers. We team bond with fun outings, we include cemetery and family counselors , we work together for the end goal our families and I have to say we have the best customer service too! Funeral homes are already a sad place for families to walk into, but if the staff are happy, the atmosphere changes families feel less stressed and  in most cases, they are much more comfortable with us.

I worked at this company for about 5 months and was then dismissed. The reason for my termination was that I lodged a complaint with the management about their excessive interference in my sales activities. They would evaluate my performance every week and demand that I make 30 phone calls daily. It was simply unreasonable.

During the training, they portrayed this job as a prestigious career, but in reality, all they cared about was money. Every month, we had sales meetings where motivational speakers from the US would come and pump us up, much like a pyramid scheme, boasting about buying fancy cars after setting their goals.

As for the job itself, there was indeed a great sense of achievement in genuinely helping a family. However, the burial plot prices in Vancouver were excessively high, forcing many of my clients to opt for government-owned cemeteries due to this reason.

Welcoming staff and supportive leadership, I have nothing but positive things to say about working here, I know that SCI has a bad reputation in the profession, I have been here 10+ years and I have seen so much improvement and growth especially in the past 3 years. They are working hard to listen to what their associates need and delivering on those requests. There are lots of training opportunities and lots of room to advance, if that is what you are looking for. They are focusing on the customer experience and celebrating our associates. Don't be deterred from SCI because of what you have heard, meet us and see for yourself. 

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Sales representative 1 salary reported	$55,000 per year
Service advisor 3 salaries reported	$50,596 per year
Animal advancement specialist 4 salaries reported	$66,875 per year
Funeral director 5 salaries reported	$73,146 per year
Directeur de magasin 3 salaries reported	$70,000 per year

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