AWA TOPIC
Read the statement and the instructions that follow it, and then make any notes that will help you plan your response. Begin typing your response at the bottom of the screen. You have 30 minutes in which to complete the essay.
"Seven years ago, Zephyr Industries had no problem recruiting qualified candidates from college campuses. This year, however, Zephyr has hired only three qualified interns, fewer than one-quarter of those hired in each of the three preceding years. This suggests that the company's recruitment efforts need to be revamped. Since a growing number of potential recruits learn of career opportunities via social media and online discussion boards, Zephyr should suspend its campus recruitment efforts and instead hire social media consultants."
Discuss how well-reasoned you find this argument. bla bla...
ANSWER
The author here wants to state that, since Zephyr has hired less number of students from the campus, so the company recruitment efforts of the company should be revamped. As the company is not propagating itself well in the social media and online discussion board, so less number of students are knowing about the company, and hence the lesser the number of students getting hired than the previous three years trend. So the author suggests the company to hire more social media consultants as they can help the company showcase itself in the social media and online discussion boards.
In his argument the author is making a fault to directly assume that the company is not attracting more talent because of less publicity online, where as there can be many different scenarios except this. Such as the maybe this year the recession have hit the company and it is not a position to hire more from the campus. The company might be in cost cutting mode and is rather firing employees than hiring them. There might also be a situation in which the company did not find suitable candidate for its profile from the college campus. Suppose, Zephyr is paper technology based company. May be less number of students took that course this year compared to other years. so among the few present, the company hired whomever it found to be suitable for the profile. There might also be a possibility that the company has hired its usual from the campus, but the students got selected in some other company giving better renumeration than Zephyr and so they decided to make the switch before joining only. Also, the company might have shifted it focus from hiring more freshers to hiring more number of experienced workers so that it have to spend less on training them and educating them about the process of the industry.
Now coming to the authors conclusion that the company needs to hire social media consultants to increase its intake from the college campus. This conclusion is flawed in many ways. What if the company already have social media consultants; its not mentioned anywhere in the passage that they don't have them. What will happen to the production of the company if recruits of core sector are not coming in, rather the company is wasting its capital on human resource management. What the author could have mentioned here is that the company is in a very good state now, and making progress, though it is not being able to acquire more talent from the campus, so the company needs specialist recruitment officers in the online sector to target the masses and increase the companies credibility amongst the youth fresh out of college. The author should have mentioned other parameters as well such as no recession or hiring freeze by the company or students not getting better job offers from campus.
If the author would have mentioned the complete scenario, it would have been better to conclude as the author did. But with the argument statements just as stated, it is difficult to conclude that only due to less number of social media consultants the company is not doing well in the campus hiring process.