Reply to Some honest opinions about relocating to the midwest?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm originally from a small town about 60-90 minutes south of Cleveland, then I lived in a close-in Cleveland suburb for 6 years after I graduated college. In Ohio, the cost of living is quite a bit lower. Especially the cost of housing - although I'll be honest and say that housing prices are starting to creep up close to Cleveland in the desirable suburbs. It's not one of those cities where you can buy a new McMansion 25 minutes away from downtown in a safe city with a top school district for 250k. The housing stock is largely older if you're close to the city and a 250k house in a top suburb is going to be older and small.

I think the biggest adjustment for you is going to be the fact that almost everyone is "from" that city, especially if you choose a smaller city (a Cleveland or Cincinnati type city as opposed to a larger city like Chicago or Minneapolis). There won't be new kids in school, and people rarely move there because there just aren't as many jobs to draw new people in. You're going to stick out as the new people in town and you won't have the small town connections. That was really hard for me - like REALLY hard. I got my post-college job through sheer dumb luck but once I had it I was basically stuck because so much of job hunting in a smaller city with limited opportunities is who you know.

Case in point: Read up on the Kelly Blazek controversy from last year. This woman ran the largest jobs list for communications jobs in Cleveland and if you didn't personally know her or have a connection with her, TOUGH COOKIES! She would reject your application just to get on the list. This is obviously something that affects younger people who are just starting out more than older people. So if you have kids, it's going to be hard for them to live there because of this old guard, "who you know" mentality. http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2014/02/25/kelly-blazek-head-of-cleveland-job-bank-writes-scathing-emails-to-local-job-seekers[/quote]
This.  Midwestern towns are very insular.  If you didn't grow up there, even if your kids move there in 3rd grade or something, you will ever be an "outsider".[/quote]

While that might be true in small towns, that's simply not true for the larger cities.  [/quote]

It's not true for the larger cities like Chicago and Minneapolis or anywhere else that is growing and draws transplants (Indianapolis? Omaha, maybe?) It is definitely true for any city with a less robust job market where people are born, grow up, live, and die there. In the small town where I grew up/graduated from high school we definitely benefited from my dad's connections. He grew up (near) there too. But it was just far enough away from Cleveland where when I moved up there after college I didn't get any of those benefits and it was TOUGH. It seems like everyone got their first internship/first job through their dads or moms or other family member and that held true of my friends from college who were from, like, Dayton and Toledo as well.[/quote]

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