Argument241【0806G-Sunbird小组】第7次作业

liouvilleUID: 2412940

TOPIC: ARGUMENT241 - 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 resumés 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."
WORDS: 460          TIME: 00:45:00          DATE: 2007-12-4 22:49:22

The arguer concludes in the statement that it is a mistake to use Walsh Personnel Firm to replace Delany Personnel Firm. To support this conclusion, the arguer provides evidence that last year people who chose Delany found jobs much more quickly than those who did not, he also compares the performance of the two companies last year that clients of Delany took less average time to find jobs. It seems logical according the evidence provided, but we can find the reasoning is not convincing after careful scrutiny.

Firstly, the speaker does not provide evidence to prove that Delany is the cause for people who used Delany to find jobs much more quickly than those who did not. There are differences between individuals, there should the possibility that the people who used Delany to find job were intrinsically more capable and skillful than those who did not use Delany. Or, maybe the former were more active to find jobs than the latter, and then Delany would not play any role to the result of finding jobs. So it would be more interesting to compare the abilities and attitudes of the staffs who used Delany and not.

Secondly, there is no evidence to claim that Walsh had a worse performance when XYZ used Walsh eight years ago. Eight years ago, XYZ only used Walsh and half of XYZ's laid-off employees found jobs within a year, it does not mean anything, however, because XYZ did not use Delany then, maybe if Delany handled these staffs, the employment rate would be worse than Walsh. Also, this case happened eight years ago, the employment market may be depressed, maybe it was a good success then that half of them can find job. Even this possibility may happen that many of the laid-off employees chose to study further or do their own business rather than finding jobs in another company.

Thirdly, the arguer can not conclude that Delany is better than Walsh basing on the performance of them last year. Though Delany's clients took less average time to find jobs than Walsh, a possibility is that the clients of Delany are more excellent than those of Walsh. Another possibility is the professions of the clients using Delany are very different with those of the clients using Walsh, there are different employment markets for different profession, and maybe it is much easier for the clients using Delany to find jobs because their professions are welcomed. It is more helpful if the arguer can find the enough data to provide the profession information of the clients.

In conclusion, the conclusion of the article is not compelling because of the flaws above. More detailed investigation and study should be carried out before the arguer comes up the final decision.  

[ 本帖最后由 liouville 于 2007-12-10 12:29 编辑 ]