Student job
Name a user, a job-to-be-done, and a trade-off the recommendation must face.
curriculum / GVI
Module three: uncover needs and resolve trade-offs.
Understanding consumer needs in GVI is not a mood board. It is a disciplined look at what people are trying to get done, what they will not give up, and what the client cannot maximize at once.
Brochure skills
PowerPoint, business judgment, critical thinking.
Finish line
A short deck or memo that makes a choice, not a list of “quality and price.”
Uncovering needs from a laptop
Students will rarely run a perfect ethnography in a virtual internship. They can still use public reviews, stated strategy, category norms, and careful reasoning about jobs-to-be-done. They must label inference as inference. Invented quotes are integrity failures.
Trade-offs are the module
If the customer wants everything, you have not done the work. Price versus convenience, growth versus trust, customization versus speed, premium versus access: pick the conflict the client actually has. Business judgment is the courage to say which side the evidence supports.
Why PowerPoint is listed here
Because trade-offs have to be seen. A single slide that states the user, the need, the constraint, and the implication is more professional than twelve slides of stock photos. Critical thinking shows up as what you refuse to put on the slide.
Track flavors
Marketing lives here. Consulting uses this module to avoid a recommendation nobody would buy. Entrepreneurship uses it to stop building for an imaginary user. Finance uses it so the model is not deaf. Data uses it so the metric is not cruel.
Review questions
Who is the user? What are they trying to do? What will they not sacrifice? What does that do to the later recommendation? If the student cannot answer without reading, the module is not done.
Methods that are allowed on a laptop
Public reviews, stated company strategy, category norms, jobs-to-be-done reasoning, simple segmentation from public data. Interviews only if a school can supervise ethics and consent. Invented quotes are a fail. Generative “personas” with fake names are a fail unless labelled as fiction, which they usually should not be in an internship brief.
Write the inference chain: we saw X public signal, therefore we believe Y need, therefore Z trade-off. Mentors should be able to cut the chain at the weakest link. That is critical thinking, which the brochure lists here for a reason.
The one slide that means you finished
User. Job. Constraint they will not sacrifice. Implication for the later recommendation. If that slide needs a speech, it is not done. PowerPoint is listed in this module because the choice has to be seen, not because animation is a skill outcome.
Continue
Keep exploring GVI.
Each page covers a different part of the remote internship pathway so families can compare structure, work, and evidence.
tracks
Marketing practice: a customer, a trade-off, a story that can run.
The marketing track runs GVI’s modules around consumer needs, positioning choices, and a client-ready narrative that survives a number.
curriculum
Module two: from data to insight, including the uncomfortable sensitivity.
GVI’s data-analysis module trains spreadsheet thinking: a model that can change, a sensitivity that might overturn the first story, and an insight a stakeholder can use.
curriculum
Module four: putting it all together for a client.
The client-recommendation module is synthesis, client communication, and stakeholder management — a point of view a professional audience could accept, reject, or modify.
service
Recommendations are where research becomes judgment.
The client recommendation lab is the uncomfortable middle: choosing what matters, naming trade-offs, and writing a point of view a business audience could accept or reject.
apply
Start with preparation, then ask for a written cohort confirmation.
Applying to GVI is not a mystery funnel. Read the curriculum, choose a practice track, prepare a short brief of interest, and verify coaching, artifacts, and claims in writing before any payment conversation.
resource
Examples should help students imagine the work, not clone it.
These patterns follow the brochure modules: research briefs, analysis memos, consumer-needs trade-offs, recommendation decks, and next-step plans.