Print This
Email ThisAs young professionals living the dream, making money and becoming successful is only half of the equation. What good is success if you don’t have someone special to share it with?
Let’s say you move to a new city to take up your dream job… where do you meet people? This often has a direct effect on your happiness. Besides love, where do you meet friends and people of similar interests? Internet dating works for some, but after hearing some horror stories (and a few tales of love) I’m a little wary of digital lovin’.
Fortunately for me, I joined a company with a great leadership program with a bunch of college grads in the similar situation. This helped me quickly establish a group of friends after moving over a thousand miles away from my buddies and family. For many people that aren’t so lucky, getting out and meeting people for the first time is tough! Even though I got lucky when I moved to Milwaukee, I can sympathize with troubles in meeting new people. I went to three high schools, believe me, it’s tough putting yourself out there.
After chatting with some friends who moved far away from their support networks, we came up with a few ideas on where you can meet new folks:
Volunteering
Volunteering is a great way to meet people. Whether you’re at the humane society or a hospice, it’s a great opportunity to meet non-selfish people while giving back at the same time. Double bonus. The best thing about volunteering, especially the more repetitive tasks like painting or cleaning, is that there is plenty of time to chat with fellow volunteers. One of my friends was actually hooked up on a blind date with a girl by the girl’s mom after she noticed what a nice guy he was to be volunteering his time during the weekend. How’s that for a recommendation? You may want to make sure the mom carries pictures though!
Facebook (I know the internet is cheating, but listen before you groan.)
This is a tried and true method for meeting people, especially internationally. When I moved to Brussels, Belgium in 2006 I went to Facebook to seek out other expats from the University of Florida to watch the NCAA tournament with. I hooked up with a nice group of girls studying French at a local university and was immediately plugged into their social scene. It paid dividends later when the group of girls left, but I met up with the incoming group who I continued to hang out with for the remainder of the summer. My friend went to remote Umea, Sweden and also met a few nice ladies with the ‘I’m new in town routine’ on Facebook 
Easy to do, free and minimal effort. Score.
Young Professional Events
If you’re in any decent sized city, odds are the local chamber of commerce or similar government office, has set up a young professionals organization. While I’ve found these events to have some of the cheesiest business card trading I’ve even seen (as well as some NOT so young professionals) this thinly veiled meat/meet market is a great place to at least find some people your age in a similar situation. The nice thing is that alcohol is often available as a little social lubricant. A little liquid courage combined with the fact that the events are supposed to be networking opportunities means you can usually throw caution to the wind and approach anyone freely without feeling too self-conscious.
So, there are three basic places for you to meet some newly corporate types besides a gym, bar, or grocery store. While these aren’t the only places to meet new people, if you try one or two of these out you should at least have a decent starting point for making new friends or maybe even a date! I’m interested to hear about any success or disaster stories from my fellow NC readers.
Coincidentally, I’m always looking for new friends in the UK. If you’re newly corporate in London, drop me a line. We might even be able to set up a pub meet-up!
For more timely, relevant, and engaging articles, subscribe to Brazen Careerist.
Grant: I was not prepared for how hard it is to find people your age post-college. It’s a shift that no one tells you about before you graduate.
However, I found a great group of like-minded women while volunteering (it was actually a single volunteers event, but we didn’t find any guys we were interested in, so the girls bonded instead).
I think another rule of thumb is to get involved in groups that interest you. If you’re a singer, don’t sing in your apartment, go find an a cappella group. If you like to cook, take a cooking class, and so on.
I realize I am a dinosaur - did it ever occurr to you that you might be able to meet young, like minded people at your church or synagogue? I would think it would rank higher in potential than Facebook.
@ Bob: I met my husband at church but that was only because I was friends with his sister. At the time I met him, I had sworn off dating men from church because being apart of the community was more important to me than dating within the community (I feared wanting to leave the church if things didn’t work out in the relationship).
I think about it this way: If your church is referred to as your “church family”, what happens with you date within your “family”? Does that become emotional incest? This might be different at megachurches but in a smaller church like mine, I think internal dating can be problematic.
Local networking groups are a great way to meet like minded people, not only as friends and acquaintances, but also as possible business and venture partners. Check Upcoming.org, Craigslist and even Facebook calendars for events near you.
What I’ve seen as really popular with friends. Several people pick a hotel bar/watering hole with good parking. They e-mail all their contacts that they’re having a happy hour at location X using invite software that stores the addresses, allowing all the invitees to forward it on to their friends. It starts small, but can eventually gain traction and build numbers. My friend’s group has about 450 people on her invite list, so there are always 50-100 people at every happy she and her friends host. And everyone still brings newbies, so the pool creeps up in size.
You just have to be willing to nurture and grow your networking group.
Another great way to meet professionals. . . networking organizations. Step Up Women’s Network is in LA, NYC, Chicago. Frocks, Rocks, and Cocktails is in NYC. . Women’s Information Network and Girls & the City are in DC. (Sorry, I have no gender neutral suggestions because I was researching other women’s networking groups for Step Up a while back)
Yeah, the “I’m new in town” routine works so well, I wish I was always new in town. Lol.
How’s London? I’m going to Europe at the end of the month, flying into London and basically trying to visit as many places as physically possibe in two weeks. Just my brother and I, I’m looking forward to it, I’ve never left the US before…
Thanks for the input everyone!
William- London is a great city. Be sure to go on a London walk (www.walks.com) to see some of the city and learn even more!
What cities are you going to see? I have a soft spot for Belgium and their beers. Ghent, Antwerp and Brugge are just so lovely!