[Big Fish]03月07日Argument241--By sunny球

sunny球UID: 2693880

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."

   
In this argument, the author proposes that using the less-expensive Walsh Personnel Firm instead of Delany should be a mistake. To justify this claim, the arguer makes a comparison between the average time of the fired employees in hunting for new jobs after receiving services provided by different companies. However, the argument suffers from several critical fallacies.
  
First of all, the author unfairly attributes the successful employment result of the laid-off employees who have benefited greatly from Delany to the effective services provided by this company. It is entirely possible that the laid-off employees who have received the services are more carving to find new jobs and behave more persistent. Of course, they will find satisfied jobs finally after making more efforts than those who do not receive any services. What's more, the author overlook the importance that in finding a favorable job, it is personal abilities such as managing skills or cooperation with others, rather than the unique resumes or interviewing skills, that really matters. Without the essential abilities, other assistances may not decide whether a job hunter can be admitted.

However, even if the considerate services of Delany have contributed to the job hunting, we can not evaluate Delany and Walsh, which is more effective, only based on the inappropriate comparison of the time spend on job hunting after receiving services. Lacking detailed description of jobs found by Delany's clients and Walsh's clients, we can not estimate the quality of the jobs, let alone the satisfaction of the laid-off employees. Perhaps because of the higher cost, the workers assisted by Delany are hastier to get the jobs though they are a little discontent. On the other hand, the arguer fails to inform us the total amount of the fired employees and the standard to fire them. Perhaps the clients laid off last year are more excellent than those eight years ago, or perhaps the job markets need more clients recently, as a result, they will find jobs more quickly.


Furthermore, even if the Delany is better than Walsh, the size of staff and number of branch offices do not necessarily indicate the quality and effectiveness of a company's service. The argument fails to tell us the staff allocated per client. Also, without more information about different functions of each branch offices, it hardly to draw firm conclusion that Delany is superior than others and deserves the money, due to some departments may not prepare for clients.

As it stands, the argument for choosing services provided by Delany rather than Walsh is not well reasoned. To make it logically acceptable, the arguer would have to take into account the average level of the clients as well as the condition of job market. To strength the argument, the arguer would have to provide further information about different functions of each branch offices of Delany.