Minnesota Nice and Networking

This article is about dealing with Minnesota Nice when trying to get a job in Minneapolis. I know that Minneapolis being in Minnesota tends to get a bad rep about the whole Minnesota Nice thing. So does my stuff on networking work here. I was warned many a time that it would be difficult to make friends here and really establish relationships. But I think this is unfair criticism as I have lived in some other cities around the United States including San Francisco, Oakland and New York City and I wouldn’t say that it was that much different in interacting with people except for the thing that Minnesotans are way more polite and friendlier.

I guess I am also only 23 years old and may need to spend more time living in different places before I can make any comparisons. But I have been doing some research and talking to people of all ages in addition to my own experiences. I think the negative qualities such as resistance to change and passive aggression associated with Minnesota are quite prejudiced. For every instance that a person could come up with that a Minnesotan was unwilling to take a risk, I could give examples where they did. For instance, take the famous case of Randy Moss in the 1998 NFL Draft being picked by the Vikings. I thought that was a big time gamble that paid off vast dividends.

The media doesn't help either. The CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother has a character called Marshall Eriksen whose Minnesota family tends to be more "nice" than the usual Minnesota Nice. The famous movie Fargo also has a lot of these stereotypes on display.

I actually enjoy the inclination of Minnesotans to be understated and their characteristic of not standing out. I think it’s a great way to make money because the way you get rich is to live well below your means. It’s like I said, my personality and interests fits this city perfectly. It’s just like any other great American city really. All the stuff about networking will work here.