【kaleidoscope】第九次作业 ARGUMENT241 by wdassfm

wdassfmUID: 2542447

241.The following appeared in a memo at the XYZ company.

"When XYZ lays off employees, it pays Delany Personnel Firm to offer those employees assistance in creating resumes and developing interviewing skills, if they so desire. Laid-off employees have benefited greatly from Delany's services: last year those who used Delany found jobs much more quickly than did those who did not. Recently, it has been proposed that we use the less-expensive Walsh Personnel Firm in place of Delany. This would be a mistake because eight years ago, when XYZ was using Walsh, only half of the workers we laid off at that time found jobs within a year. Moreover, Delany is clearly superior, as evidenced by its bigger staff and larger number of branch offices. After all, last year Delany's clients took an average of six months to find jobs, whereas Walsh's clients took nine."


By comparing several aspects between Delay and Walsh, the two companies helping lay-off workers to find job, the arguer's conclusion seem apparent and clear that Delany is superior. However, the evidences provided might fail to substantiate the assertion. Several flaws are discussed as below.

Firstly, the comparison between people who use Delany and people who do not apparently lacks strength. As the arguer mentioned, lay-off workers are provide the chance to choose whether use this company or not. Thus, for those do not use Delany, it may merely due to their unwillingness to find another job rather than the lack of assistance of Delany that contribute more to their delay of job finding. Without information concerning whether these people have appealed to other company for assistance, the fact mentioned above makes little sense.

Secondly, I see little meaning in the evidence that only half of the lay-off workers found job eight years ago. Without comparison with the number of lay-off workers who find jobs, the arguer seems take it for granted that "half" is a proportion that is too small. Meanwhile, even the number of job-regained workers is too small compared to Delany, this situation may result from several other reasons rather than the low quality of Walsh. After all, eight years is quiet a long time. It is entirely possible that in that time, notion of finding another job after be laid off is not pervading, or simply because job market was shrinking at that time. Without rolling out all these possibilities, the arguer can not convince me that Walsh is not capable enough.

Thirdly, the conclusion Delany is superior may not be sustainable. Though it has a bigger staff and larger number of branch offices, this does not amount to high quality in helping workers in finding jobs, instead, this could merely be the explanation or excuse for higher charge. In addition, the longer term taken for job finding in Walsh is not compelling enough to indicate that Walsh is actually weaker since no evidence of other years are provided by merely mentioning one year. Also, shorter time may not guarantee better quality of jobs. To strengthen this assertion, the arguer should provide details about the kinds of jobs gained by workers through different companies.


In sum, the conclusion as curtly drawn with so much cursoriness mentioned above. In order to sustain the arguer’s assertion, more comparison and details about these them are needed. Otherwise, undue reliance on Delany may be merely money consuming.