IT Services Supporting MZ Generation's 'Gat-saeng' Catch Attention

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] As the so-called 'Gotseng' culture takes root mainly among the MZ generation (Millennials + Generation Z), startups providing related IT services are also gaining attention.

Gotseng is a newly coined term combining 'God' and 'life,' meaning a diligent and exemplary life. While 'YOLO' (You Only Live Once) was the trend until a few years ago, the trend now is that more MZ generation individuals are enhancing their personal capabilities or earning side income through various activities. They place importance on living a more fulfilling life by leveraging small and large growth opportunities.

Riding this trend, various services supporting the MZ generation to live a Gotseng life are thriving. These include career social networking services (SNS) where users can conduct side projects with industry professionals, growth management applications that help form habits, and platforms that find gigs for N-jobbers.

‘Careery,’ operated by career tech startup Publy, is a career SNS specialized for 2030 office workers employed in the IT industry. It attracts great interest among office workers and job seekers as they can access fast insights shared by professionals from leading domestic and international IT companies and startups and network with them directly. Based on networking, users can continue learning, self-development, and career advancement in related or interested industries, making it an essential app for office workers who need career tech.

Careery officially entered the side project market by beta launching the ‘Side Project Lounge’ service last April. Currently, more than 60 projects are running successfully, and users can exchange messages and have sufficient conversations to find desired projects and team members.

The biggest advantage of Careery’s Side Project Lounge is that users can find colleagues based on the ‘Careery Profile,’ which transparently discloses the company and job position they are currently employed at. Also, since Careery users working in various roles in the IT industry and startups participate, it is easy to find optimized practitioners for each project.

As the concept of a lifelong job fades, ‘N-jobbers’ who have multiple jobs besides their main job are active. A gig matching service that supports these N-jobbers to experience various jobs more easily and conveniently is drawing attention.

‘Yogig,’ a gig matching platform operated by deep tech company Enterprise Blockchain, targets N-jobbers and gig workers (short-term workers). Users can search and compare job information posted on various gig work platforms within Yogig. By providing reviews from users who have performed the jobs and career management functions, it helps users match jobs smoothly. Currently, Yogig has about 4,000 reviews from people who have actually worked on various gig work platforms.

Earlier this month, Yogig newly updated the location-based gig matching feature called ‘Neighborhood Mission.’ Users can easily find gigs they can perform by automatically detecting their current location without having to specify a place when using the app. It is also notable that users can search for N-jobs near them by category, date, and time slot in detail.

Services where many people grow together by achieving big and small goals are also gaining attention. ‘Grow,’ a growth management app launched by lifelong education specialist Hunet, aims to be a ‘non-competitive kind growth community’ where goal challengers encourage each other and grow together.

Grow features the ability to check various goals and practice records ranging from small habits like ‘drinking water’ and ‘morning exercise’ to long-term goals such as ‘obtaining certifications,’ ‘learning foreign languages,’ and ‘losing weight.’ Users can set goals such as ‘vision management,’ ‘goal management,’ and ‘gratitude journaling,’ or participate in various challenges, sharing these with other users to encourage each other to achieve their goals.

The popularity of services that provide lectures in various fields to help learners build knowledge and capabilities is also increasing day by day. ‘Taling,’ an online and offline class platform, offers lectures in 200 fields. Users can find courses closely related to company jobs such as Excel, Photoshop, and English, as well as fields like finance, hobbies, and beauty.

According to Taling, the most searched keyword by customers in Q2 2022 was dance, followed by ▲2nd personal color ▲3rd vocal ▲4th makeup ▲5th Excel ▲6th English ▲7th photography ▲8th Photoshop ▲9th Instagram ▲10th real estate. Items related to personal branding occupied the top four ranks, and other items related to work skill improvement and self-development also ranked high, confirming the high interest in ‘Gotseng.’