argument essay

[janeyy.m]

Please evaluate another of my argument essay.
Tommy (if you are the one reading), I really appreciated your comments on my previous essays. I'm trying to use the two weeks I have left until my test to really force myself to practice for the essays.
Many thanks!

The following appeared in a memo at XYZ company:

When XYZ lays 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."

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
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The memo at XYZ company concludes that Delany Personnel Firm is superior to the Walsh company and thus XYZ should not use the Walsh firm in offering laid-off employees assistance. However, the argument rests weakly on a number of unwarranted assumptions: that such assistance companies are the only and direct causation for the laid off employees in finding jobs again, that the job market in the past is exactly the same as that of the present day, and that all the clients who use both personnel firms are identical.
The first unstated assumption the memo makes is that the correlation of Delany’s services and its clients’ return to the job market indicates direct causation. This assumption fails to account for other possible factors that may have led to the employees’ finding jobs again. Perhaps those who used the Delany services were more motivated to find jobs again than those who did not and thus were willing to use every resource possible, including Delany’s services. If this were the case, the success of the clients’ employment would not be attributed to Delany’s services, but rather to the clients’ motivation and perseverance.
Even if the Delany services did in fact lead to the clients’ success in employment, the assumption that what was true eight years ago will be true in the present day weakens the argument. The argument rejects the idea of using Walsh because only half of the laid-off workers found jobs again with the Walsh services. Not only does this assertion fail to compare to how the Delany services were eight years ago, but it also assumes that the job market has not changed at all over the course of eight years. Perhaps Walsh and Delany services are actually equal in its service qualities. Simply judging Walsh negatively on its services eight years ago would lead the company to pay more for Delany unnecessarily.
Finally, the argument assumes that the clients who use Delany and Walsh are all identical. It is highly likely that this is not the case. Perhaps those who used Delany services in comparison to the Walsh services are more competent and experienced and thus were able to place themselves back into jobs. If this were true, the issue is no longer whether or not Delany is indeed superior to Walsh, but what type of clients will be using the firms’ services.
Failing to address these untenable assumptions and proceeding to use Delany Personnell Firm again for a higher price can result in XYZ’s spending an unnecessarily high amount of money. For the financial benefits of XYZ, these assumptions need to be addressed before the company proceeds in choosing Delany over Walsh.

[tommywallach]

Hey Janey,

Solid essay here. Good writing and good points throughout. However, I think you missed a couple issues that the prompt REALLY wanted you to hit, which is an error. Stay as close as you can to the prompt itself, and look at the words they use.

1) The last sentence says people take 6 months now and took 9 months then. While you mention in an earlier paragraph the possibility that the job market has changed, you really MUST use this statistic to make that point. In other words, this particular fact is not useful, because the job market could be much different. If there are twice as many available jobs, then 6 months might be embarrassingly long. If there are half as many available jobs, then 9 months might actually be a really solid number.

2) You totally ignored the sentence that talks about how it must be better because it has a bigger staff and more branch offices. Obviously, this does not follow naturally. Many enormous companies, such as Microsoft, end up undercut by smaller, upstart competitors (such as Apple). Just having more staff/offices does not make for a better company.

Again, the points you made were good, but you should really be tying your points to the text as much as possible. Look for your errors/assumptions in the text as written, and only go general when you must. Make sense?

-t