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 discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The speaker concludes that Delany Personnel firm is superior than Walsh Personnel Firm to provide assistance in creating resumes and developing interviewing skills to the laid-off employees of XYZ Company. While it may be true that Delany provides better assistance to the employees, the speaker fails to provide credible evidence to prove that the proposed less expensive firm Walsh is not better than Delany.
Firstly, citing that eight years ago when the company used Walsh, only half of the laid off workers found jobs within a year is baseless as no evidence regarding the number of employees and the reason for the layoff is provided. Layoffs could take place for many reasons other than the ineptness of the employee itself, for example eight years ago a recession could have affected the overall job market causing even a skilled employee to lose his/her job. In such a case it would be difficult to find jobs even with the help of any assistance from Walsh in creating resumes and developing skills and probably using Delany would have rendered the same results. It is possible that the remaining employees might have found jobs one year later when the job market was considerably doing well. Additionally, stating the term “half” of the laid-off employees who found jobs within year is incomputable when we don’t know the actual number or statistics as half could be 0.5 per cent or half the actual number. Without these substantial evidences and statistics the speaker cannot use this information to support the argument.
Secondly the speaker mentions last year’s scenario when Delany’s clients took average of six months to find jobs whereas Walsh’s clients took nine months. Was this average duration taken by clients of both the firms same as last year? Last year’s information is not representative of years before that or for the year to come. While nine months may seem longer than six months a clear correlation between the two firms is not effectively made as the number of clients and the company they belong to may vary significantly. As mentioned if Walsh is less expensive it is possible that Walsh has notably more clients as only a few clients might afford Delany’s frim. For example, if Walsh’s was able to help 100 clients find a job in nine months and on the other hand Delaney was able to help 20 clients find a job in six months then XYZ Company may consider using Walsh. To underpin the argument the evidences of earlier years and number of clients of both the firms must be presented.
Finally, though Delany has a larger number of branch offices and a bigger staff, without knowing the size and branches of Walsh XYZ Company cannot decide which firm is better. Also, bigger staff and larger number of branch offices do not imply that the quality of assistance provided by Delany is better than that of Walsh as this is mentioned nowhere in the argument. Apart from this, finding a job also depends on the skills employee themselves in case where the employee is not hardworking enough then assistance from any firm wouldn’t help. Information about Walsh and its size, details about the quality of assistance provided by the two firms will help buttress the argument.
XYZ company should take into account the quality and effectives of Delany and Walsh Personnel Firms in order to decide which one to use. Without this information the arguments has obvious gaps and lacks cogency.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 582 350
No. of Characters: 2794 1500
No. of Different Words: 246 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.912 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.801 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.431 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 203 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 146 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.714 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.902 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.524 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.324 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.549 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.122 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 62, Rule ID: SUPERIOR_THAN[1]
Message: The adjective superior is normally used with 'to'.
Suggestion: to
... that Delany Personnel firm is superior than Walsh Personnel Firm to provide assista...
^^^^
Line 5, column 1015, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ts of both the firms must be presented. Finally, though Delany has a larger numb...
^^^^^
Line 7, column 421, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'skills'' or 'skill's'?
Suggestion: skills'; skill's
...this, finding a job also depends on the skills employee themselves in case where the e...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, firstly, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, well, whereas, while, apart from, for example, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2899.0 2260.96107784 128% => OK
No of words: 579.0 441.139720559 131% => OK
Chars per words: 5.00690846287 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.90534594407 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.63288014027 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 250.0 204.123752495 122% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.431778929188 0.468620217663 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 867.6 705.55239521 123% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 2.0 8.76447105788 23% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.3744371316 57.8364921388 84% => OK
Chars per sentence: 138.047619048 119.503703932 116% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.5714285714 23.324526521 118% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.04761904762 5.70786347227 123% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.185471047512 0.218282227539 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0655963207935 0.0743258471296 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0798297440307 0.0701772020484 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.128539123792 0.128457276422 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0762492854942 0.0628817314937 121% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.0 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 52.53 48.3550499002 109% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.6 12.197005988 103% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.07 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.95 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 109.0 98.500998004 111% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 17.5 12.3882235529 141% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.