Gen Z: Digging for Gold

The period between 1996 and 2010 doubled over on itself for how many changes it saw. The dot-com boom, climate disasters, the birth of social media, political instability and a pandemic all go into the same mix that created Generation Z. “Because of this, they grew up in an era of awareness-- politically, environmentally, socially… So when we look at it from a workforce perspective, Gen Zs want to work in companies which help society,” says Gigi Wang, guest of this month’s speaker series.

Gigi is a faculty member at UC Berkeley with over two decades of entrepreneurial experience. She founded her own consulting company in the mid-2000s, and is one of Minite's advisors. If we know anyone who is the expert on students and the entrepreneurial mojo, it’s Gigi. And with our platform catering to ambitious students who are part of this goldmine generation, we’ve been asking ourselves a question. As generation potential, how can we become generation progress?

Being utterly predisposed to constant and instantaneous change, Gen Z has adapted accordingly, and so has the world: skills are more transferable and easier to gain via the endless bounds of resources provided online, but competition is also higher than it has ever been, whether that be in the academic or professional world. Accordingly, the career landscape is changing, and jobs are more temporary-- nothing is ever certain.

...Except for this one thing: Gen Z is a goldmine that’s only just being discovered. We can’t force the manifold magicians of Gen Z to enter an outdated structure of a workforce, when the new behaviours and skills we are observing in young adults so clearly require new and different ways of working. What’s up next is all just a matter of capitalizing on the versatility this young generation has been raised in and with which they are now entering the career world.

Grow through what you go through

Greater transferability of skills and a desire for independence and freedom set the standard for a new landscape of work. “There’s something we have to take note of here: Gen Z had to face COVID. I saw many of my students graduate during the pandemic. They had job offers rescinded or had to work from home-- they never got the same social and physical exposure to the workplace as generations previous did.” Indeed, there was no formal introduction to “real life”. Gigi pauses and picks back up, with her brilliant optimism and eye for opportunity: “But this group has developed great online skills. Gen Z knows how to get work done and collaborate in the digital world. That’s a huge help to creating a more efficient future of working. Companies are moving to a hybrid model. And here you have Gen Z, ready to adapt: they’re going to create the best of both worlds.” In this way, these up- and-coming students in the modern workforce are pioneers of a new reality, but that comes with challenges.

And who knows challenges better than the world’s oldest pioneers for change… entrepreneurs. The business world has always been here to rock the boat. When Minite first started, there was so much to learn about adaptation, failure, and persistence. That’s the entrepreneurial mindset. You fall, you get up, you fall again, you get back up again. This same mentality can be employed to entering the career world as a young student. The key to pushing a generation from potential to progress is a growth mindset.

“In our classes at Berkeley we incorporate games to challenge our students. One of them is the “marshmallow tower”, where teams build a tower with spaghetti strings and put a marshmallow on top. Most teams fail-- it’s set up to be nearly impossible. And it’s especially challenging to them, because Berkeley students aren’t used to failing. But what happens is that they fail and learn, and then reflect on what didn’t work. What could they have done differently?”

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“Gen Z is ready to adapt to the hybrid model, creating the best of both worlds. They're purpose-driven, which will unlock their potential and transform it into progress.”

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Failing is essential in life, and you can’t start failing early enough! This is where true growth happens. “You learn the most when you fail. In business, in life, you’re bound to fail, and so, what it’s really all about is learning how to fail, handling that setback, and then growing from it. It’s one of the most important things students can learn.” And besides that? “Hands-on experience,” Gigi says. Another rule of the entrepreneur: try, try, try. Don’t leave your curiosities up there in your head, let them out to play and see what happens.

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Failing is essential in life, and you can’t start failing early enough! This is where true growth happens. “You learn the most when you fail. In business, in life, you’re bound to fail, and so, what it’s really all about is learning how to fail, handling that setback, and then growing from it. It’s one of the most important things students can learn.” And besides that? “Hands-on experience,” Gigi says. Another rule of the entrepreneur: try, try, try. Don’t leave your curiosities up there in your head, let them out to play and see what happens.

Build your playground of opportunity

We applied that same concept here at Minite-- it’s what our platform is based on. Quite literally, it’s a playground of career experience. Often, students take our offer like a three-leaf clover: they say it’s rare to find opportunities that bridge the gap between the land of academia and the land of career. “Working in companies and on projects, freelancing, interacting with industries: the more experience a student can get in the real world, the better prepared they are when they graduate.”

Gigi chuckles as she tells us this next one. “My son had a summer job once where he got caught in office politics, and he was totally stressed out. I said to him, these things are normal, don’t take them personally. Now that he’s left college and started working, he runs into similar situations all the time, and he’s a pro at dealing with them. He’s just like, been there, done that.”

...How valuable it would be if every student could enter the career world saying that. But it is possible, in multiple ways. “In a traditional class structure, there’s one professor, and you do exactly what he teaches you, turning yourself into a carbon copy of that person. We need to teach students to experience their own life-- to meet all kinds of people in order to develop the unique individual that they are. In my classes, I bring in guest speakers and mentors. What happens in this dynamic is that we may say contradicting things, and have contradicting opinions, but the students learn to think on their own and evaluate the pros and cons of what each lecturer said-- they choose what’s right for them.”

Cast your net of connections

“Another important one is networking. I teach entrepreneurship, and a big element of that is building a strong network. Some of my students founded this AI startup called Latch a couple of years back. They always maintained strong relationships with all lecturers. When they launched Latch, they constantly reached out to them, asking for input and intros to other people, running their ideas by them. People loved them, their ideas, and their energy, and because they were proactive and took chances.”

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“Keep listening, engaging, having that growth mindset. You may stumble, but you can pick yourself up, and there’s always someone there to help you.”

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This curiosity and eagerness fuels the growth mindset of an entrepreneur, and we see that same mindset reflected in ambitious students becoming High-Flyers at Minite. Much like successful entrepreneurs, this is what makes Gen Z such a goldmine: their reality is changing at such a rapid rate that they’ve learned the only way to keep up is to be proactive. Gen Z, like no other, is purpose-driven, and that’s what ultimately will unlock their potential and transform it into progress. Gigi leaves us with her wise words for the up-and-coming workforce powerhouse of potential: “keep listening, engaging, having that growth mindset, and keep learning. You may stumble, but you can pick yourself up, and there’s always someone there to help you.”

Minite can be that someone… we’re here to connect you with career opportunities to freelance for the Netherlands’ coolest startups, and also with other ambitious students who’ll inspire you along the way! Ready to join the Gen-Z goldmine?  Sign up now as a High-Flyer. Getting started just takes a Minite.

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