Are you someone that has been considering lawn care jobs in Cincinnati? If you enjoy working outdoors, interacting with people, and making a difference in the community, this might be the perfect job for you.
But you may have heard some horror stories about lawn technician jobs…such as being underpaid or undervalued.
The truth is, it’s all about the company that you choose. While it’s true that there are some lawn care jobs that aren’t going to be rewarding, that can be true of any career path if you wind up with the wrong company. That’s why it’s so important to do your research.
In this guide, we will dive into everything you should know about a lawn care career including how much it pays, what type of training you’ll need, and how you can advance your career.
Starting the process as an educated job seeker will help set you up for success.
Table of Contents
- What Does a Lawn Care Technician Do?
- How Much Do Lawn Care Workers Make?
- What Experience is Needed to be a Lawn Care Technician?
- Lawn Care Job Training
- How to Become a Certified Lawn Care Technician
- What is It Like Working at Oasis Turf & Tree?
- Choose a Lawn Care Career with Oasis
What Does a Lawn Care Technician Do?
If you’re looking for a lawn care technician job description, here’s what you ought to know from one of our recent job postings.
- Our Lawn Care Technicians manage and grow a lawn care route that consists of 500 – 600 customers.
- Perform fertilizer, weed control, and insect control applications for our customers every 6-7 weeks
- Work with our customers by evaluating and communicating potential problems
- Drive and maintain assigned company vehicle
- Safely operate and maintain the ride-on machine and other assigned equipment
- Other responsibilities as assigned
Our lawn care technicians get an autonomous route and get to work directly with homeowners in the region. It’s a rewarding career in which you’re solving homeowners’ problems and making a real difference in their lives as a result.
In addition, we know that people often think of lawn care as an entirely seasonal job, but that’s not how all lawn care companies operate. Some companies use the off-season to invest in improvements and training.
How Much Do Lawn Care Workers Make?
We know that there is a common generalization that lawn care jobs don’t pay well. While that might be true at some companies, a lawn care career can actually be a well-paid, long-term career.
At Oasis Turf & Tree, we have always been completely transparent about our payscale so that there is no mystery around a lawn care technician salary. We also have a career ladder that team members can climb and with each step up comes a new potential level of earning.
Here is what you can expect from a lawn care technician salary in Cincinnati.
- Lawn Technician - ODA Trained Serviceperson: $43,000 - $58,000+
- Licensed Lawn Technician - ODA & KDA Licensed Turf Technician: $47,300 - $63,800+
- Master I Certified Lawn Expert - NALP Certified Lawn Care Technician: $51,600 - $69,600+
- Master I Certified Service Expert - NALP Certified Lawn Care Technician: $67,500+
- Master I Certified Quality Assurance Expert - NALP Certified Lawn Care Technician: $72,000+
We have similar career path charts for those interested in a tree & pest service path, a sales path, or a customer experience path.
We know that people want clear information about how much they can earn and how they can rise to a higher level. Unfortunately, at a lot of lawn care jobs, people get stuck in the same role forever and that means no room for growth or higher earning potential.
What Experience is Needed to be a Lawn Care Technician?
While we can’t tell you what other lawn care companies in Cincinnati are looking at, we can tell you that at Oasis Turf & Tree, we don’t insist upon previous lawn care experience. In fact, we have found over the years, that sometimes it’s easier to train industry outsiders how to be a lawn care technician than it is to help someone unlearn bad training that they’ve already received.
Unfortunately, it’s not that uncommon to find out that lawn care technicians were taught techniques or bad habits that they shouldn’t be doing.
So, if you don’t necessarily need experience, what is actually important for lawn care technician jobs?
At Oasis Turf & Tree, we look at characteristics like a great work ethic, people skills, and a desire to learn. These characteristics can easily trump previous experience.
That’s because we can teach you the skills that you need (like how to identify problems in the lawn or how to properly fertilize the turf). But we can’t necessarily teach you to be a “people person” if that’s not who you are.
This is actually one of the reasons that we sometimes find workers from the hospitality industry end up being excellent in lawn care jobs. They are already great at working with people, and we can teach them the rest.
But we obviously have people come to us from many fields, including from previous mowing careers. In fact, going from a mowing job to a lawn care career can be a really rewarding transition (which we explain in the article linked above).
Another thing that we look for at Oasis Turf & Tree is the willingness to be part of a team. Although it’s true that the lawn care technician jobs at Oasis are very autonomous (you’ll have your own route, truck, and customers), at the end of the day, we believe very strongly in building our team as a whole. We believe that it takes a team to accomplish what we do and it’s important to us that we find team players.
Whether you have worked in the industry before or not, all new hires can expect lawn care technician training. Our team tells us that our training far exceeds previous experiences they have had at other companies. That means there might be a lot of things that you haven’t learned.
Plus, we always believe that there is something new to learn. Our industry is continuously evolving and we care about keeping up. We’ll dive more into what to expect from training in the next section but it’s important to know that even if you have experience, you’ll be involved with our training program.
Lawn Care Job Training
Although a lot of lawn care companies in Cincinnati (and beyond) talk about training, we find that it’s an area where companies often fall short. A lot of businesses are struggling to find people right now and they simply don’t have the time to train.
But it’s an area where we are unwilling to compromise because of its critical importance to your success.
As far as what’s actually required for training, the bare minimum mandatory training that the state of Ohio expects is “service person training.” This just means one day of in-house training and reviewing best practices for operating equipment and applying products. All lawn care technicians must also shadow an employee for a work day.
The state of Ohio also requires that there is one person in a lawn care company who is licensed. Everyone else can just work “under” that person.
But at Oasis Turf & Tree, we go so much further with our training.
It is our goal to have all of our technicians licensed.
Even though it’s not “required,” we see it as incredibly valuable both to our technicians who appreciate the opportunity to learn and advance—but also to our clients who obviously benefit from having trained technicians on their properties.
Ideally, we aim to have our lawn care technicians earn their Ohio Department of Agriculture license within 90 days of employment with Oasis Turf & Tree. Currently, around 95 percent of our staff is already licensed with the remaining 5 percent being those who are relatively new hires, currently working toward that goal.
When starting out in a lawn care technician job at Oasis, new hires can anticipate that their first two weeks of work will be all about getting a strong grasp on what we do. You’ll be paired with an existing lawn care technician and shadowing them. While team members have said that in previous jobs they felt like they were “put in the field before they felt ready,” we’ll make sure that you feel totally comfortable with our equipment and products before doing the work on your own.
It’s also important that we view training as an ongoing opportunity. You’ll always have mentors to whom you can ask questions and receive support. We also perform field audits to make sure that you are comfortable with what you’re doing and don’t need any additional support.
We try not to leave any stone unturned or any person unsupported. We know that a lot of lawn care jobs in Cincinnati have high turnover rates but so often it boils down to poor training. People get thrown into a role without really knowing what they’re doing. At Oasis, we are here to support all of our team members.
While we are focusing mostly on lawn care technician jobs in this guide, the fact is, the same policies are in place for other roles. If you’re going into tree and pest services, sales, or a customer service role, you can expect the same high level of support and training so that you are fully prepared to achieve success.
How to Become a Certified Lawn Care Technician (And Other Career Growth Opportunities)
In our section on How much money do lawn care workers make, you saw salary ranges and how team members can advance their careers. But you might be wondering how that’s actually achieved.
You’ll see from our job titles and salary advancement above that there are various levels of licensing and certifications that you can earn. These require training and tests which might sound daunting but it won’t be with a company like Oasis Turf & Tree which is committed to setting you up for success.
The preparation can be as in-depth or as brief as each individual needs. Some folks who have been in the industry a long time find they already know a lot of the information they need to earn their new certifications, even if they’ve never taken an official test.
But others need time to self-study.
We provide a quiet space in the office and a bookshelf full of books for team members who want to use downtime to prepare. We also have practice tests that we can give so that team members can gauge whether they truly feel prepared.
It’s all about ensuring that you advance your career the way that you want to…and with each of these advancements is the opportunity to earn more money. These financial incentives are in place because you are becoming a more qualified and better-educated individual (and that comes at a higher pay scale).
While this is something that you would think all lawn care companies do, that’s simply not the case…and that’s exactly why people end up in the same lawn care jobs for years and years with no chance of advancing.
For one, they worry that helping lawn care technicians to become certified could mean losing them to a better-paying or higher-caliber company. But they also worry it could mean they have to pay their own employees more money.
Companies that are simply out to hire cheap labor don’t want to create more qualified employees that should be paid better.
In addition to advancing within the same path, sometimes team members look to try something different. We have had lawn care technicians become tree & pest technicians.
Sometimes, people decide they don’t want to be in the field and they’d rather be helping people from the office in a sales role. That knowledge and understanding of what’s involved in being a lawn care technician can end up supporting their sales role in many ways.
The point is, we want to find the path that is right for you and set you up for success.
If it turns out that perhaps you aren’t in the right role, we likely have something that will be a better fit. It’s not about trying to force something that’s not working. It’s all about getting you into a role where you will be happy and ultimately succeed. At Oasis Turf & Tree, we are about growing together, as a team, and in that effort, we know how much every role matters.
What is It Like Working at Oasis Turf & Tree?
We know that there are a lot of lawn care jobs in Cincinnati. There are a lot of different places where you could choose to go and grow your career. So, what makes Oasis Turf & Tree different and why should you consider a career here?
There are definitely a lot of reasons why our team loves working at Oasis Turf & Tree. And that’s important because you will spend a large number of your waking hours working…so you want to make sure it’s something you actually like!
You can read the article linked above for a more in-depth description of what our team loves about Oasis, but the 10 points that came up most frequently are as follows.
- The family/team environment
- Our commitment to quality
- Providing what is needed for success (training and top-quality equipment)
- The opportunity to earn good money
- Ongoing company improvement
- Working for people that you actually like and respect
- Opportunities for growth and advancement
- Focus on education
- Being appreciated and treated with respect
- Being part of something special
Along with that, there are also some perks that our team members have said they love. These would be things like our state-of-the-art building with a full kitchen and locker room, our top-notch equipment and vehicles, our recreation spaces indoors and outdoors, and also top-notch office equipment.
We are also very involved with thoughtful team-building activities that help to promote our strong company culture. We want Oasis Turf & Tree to be a place where people actually want to come to work and we know that part of that is building a strong team culture.
It also means having fun together.
As a team, we’ve also gone to the Bengals and Reds games. Sure, lots of companies take their teams to sporting events, but even this get-together has a lot of thought put into it. We’re not all spaced out in different seats. We generally reserve two full rows (for the Bengals game, in the endzone), and make it an entire experience. We’ll have food and drink included and everyone gets really into it.
Another popular event was a carnival-themed gathering where we hosted food trucks and had games.
As a company, we also like to volunteer within the community. What better way to come together than to serve folks right here in Cincinnati? Among many different events over the years, we’ve done things like going to the Ronald McDonald house and cooking and serving meals for family members who have patients in the hospital.
We also had a group of lawn care technicians go out and volunteer services at the Dayton National Cemetery. And we’ve hosted events and activities to raise money, such as hosting a dunking booth. Oasis Turf & Tree matched the amount of money raised by selling softballs to dunk the management team and we donated it to The Wounded Warrior Project.
We work hard, but we play hard, too. And we know that coming together as a team (both inside and outside of working hours) ultimately makes us stronger.
Choose a Lawn Care Career with Oasis
At Oasis Turf & Tree, we believe that our team members’ roles are more than just JOBS. We want them to be their careers.
We feel that our focus on education and training, our opportunities for advancement and pay raises, and our genuine care for our people are things that set us apart from other lawn care jobs in Cincinnati.
If you are someone who is looking for a lawn care job, we’d love for you to consider becoming part of our team. We want to be more than just a temporary solution for you. We want to help set you up for success and make you a long-term member of our team.
Are you looking for a lawn care technician role where you can climb the career ladder? You can find out more about a career with Oasis on our website along with the job listings we have available.
