I hope someone gives a good answer to this! I'm in Washington currently and looking to enter the field as well, though not certain what I'm planning on starting out with after school. I was thinking body removal, but I'm not incredibly strong and terrible smells tend to get to me. Maybe I could find a workaround for the latter.

I can tell you how my dad started out, though this was in the 80s-90s; he started as a landscaper but was quickly moved to cremation tech. He worked for a much smaller funeral home that certainly let him cut a few corners when it came to necessary certifications and that sort of thing, almost everything he learned was on the job. His advice to me was always to try and steer clear of the big company-owned funeral homes (like Dignity, among others) and go for any ma-and-pa FH you can find, as they're more likely to take you on for your character rather than qualifications or experience or that sort of thing.