ARGUMENT 241 - 要不要更换人才服务公司及其理由的争论

TOPIC: ARGUMENT241 - The following appeared in a memo at the XYZ Company.

"When XYZ lies off employees, it pays Delany Personnel Firm to offer those employees assistance in creating résumés 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: 407 TIME: 00:17:04 DATE: 2011-4-16 0:30:51

In this argument, the author concludes that the XYZ Company should use the less-expensive Walsh Personnel Firm in place of Delaney. At first glace, this argument seems to be convincing, but further reflection reveals that these evidences neither constitute a logical statement in support of its conclusion nor providing compelling support making this argument sound and invulnerable.

The threshold problem with this argument is that the author assumes the hope of the employee to find a job is nearly the same. Although this is entirely possible, the argument lacks evidence to confirm this assumption. It is most likely that some people are dying for a good new job, while others would rather not find a new job at present. Actually, the former is easier to find a good in shorter time. What’s more, the ability and quality of different employee is also different, which determine the time to find a good job can’t be the same. Until the author provides further evidence to exclude all these concerns, it is unfounded to reach the conclusion involved in the argument.

The second flaw that weakens the logic of this argument is that the author assumes that the evidence eight years ago is still credit. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that it is necessarily case and it is quite possible that half of the workers we laid off at that time found jobs within a year is already a good result. The employment situation changes as the time. Maybe, the job market is much better than it in eight years before. In short, without better evidence ruling out these and other alternative explanations, it is reasonable to cast considerable doubt on this assumption.

The last but not the least important, even if the author can substantiate all of the foregoing assumptions, his assumption that Delany is clearly superior for the factor evidenced by its bigger staff and larger number of branch offices is still unwarranted, because bigger staff and larger number of branch does not mean better service. The shorter time to find a good job is also not equaled to higher salary. Under any scenario, adopting the author's proposal might harm rather than benefit.

To sum up, the conclusion lacks credibility because the evidence cited in the analysis does not lend strong support to what the arguer maintains. Therefore, if the author had considered the given factors discussed above, the argument would have been more through and logically acceptable.