Meditations #2 & #3: Shreddermancy

(Note: I misunderstood the prompt for Meditation 2, and actually designed an experience more suited for Meditation 3, so for Meditation 3 I just fine-tuned what I did for the previous assignment. This post reflects the most updated experience)

Hiring is tough. Continuing the the world from my last mediation, the hiring manager has decided that they want to remove all bias from hiring decisions. They recently had a Turkish Coffee fortune telling and they loved it so much that they wanted to replicate the experience in the office. While disposing of receipts that were questionably submitted for reimbursement, the idea of using the paper shredder presented itself.

The process:

1. Take a resume and look over it. Based on what you see, think about which section of the resume is the most noteworthy to you (Is it the work experience? Is it the education?) Remember that thought.

2. Run the resume through Photomosh (a photo glitcher) until most of the text is illegible. Print this modified resume

3. On the back of the resume, create columns for each month of the year. Imagine the trajectory of the employee during these months. Keep this as a mental picture or take notes elsewhere.

4. Keeping note of the orientation of the glitched resume (is it facing the person shredding it? is it going in top first?) run it through the shredder but stop it at some point and run the shredder in reverse to keep the shape of the shreds.

   [Notes for Orientation of Shred]

   Facing Person Shredding - The applicant will lean toward working with others

   Facing Away from Person Shredding - The applicant will lean toward working alone

   Top of Paper goes in first - The applicant will dive straight into work

   Bottom of Paper goes in first - The applicant will be cautious when starting the job

5. Lay the glitched, shredded resume over the original resume, where the shred lines reveal the original resume indicates that this is the noteworthy area of the resume. Does it line up with what you thought? If not, does this change your mind? Why or why not?

6. Turn the shredded resume over. Fold the shred line back so that the peaks line up with the columns for the months that were written on the back. The lines formed by the shred indicate the predicted trajectory of the applicant in their first year on the job. Does this line up with what you thought? If not, does this change your mind? Why or why not?
   
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Reflection:

I actually really like this experience. When I first showed it, Allison pointed out that it wasn’t really all that toxic, and the more that I talked to people about it, that seemed to be the general consensus. I think that working in the space to interact with the “reading” and either galvanize or change initial impressions formed on the original resume. I think that the process of glitching the resume is a really engaging step in the process. It literally gets the viewer to look at the resume in a different way, probably in multiple ways since it takes a few passes through PhotoMosh to get something illegible enough to proceed. In the end, there’s space to completely throw out all of the reads made by the Shreddermancy, but in doing that, your own thoughts have been more fully developed.