Hey Friend!

I've been staring at data a lot this week. Layoff numbers. Demographic breakdowns. The kind of stats that get turned into LinkedIn posts with thousands of reactions and comments that say "this is unacceptable" before everyone scrolls to the next thing.

And I keep thinking about how easy it is to share a headline without ever asking what's underneath it.

"Black people are getting laid off more than anybody else." That's the soundbite. That's what gets shared. But when I sat down with Keirsten Greggs for this week's episode of The Workfluencer Podcast, she pushed back on that framing in a way that got me thinking...

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Keirsten has 26 years of recruiting experience. She's been featured in BBC, Forbes, and Fast Company. She runs her own TA consultancy, TRAP Recruiter, and hosts Trap Chat. She's someone who has spent her career taking data and translating it into meaning. And she's not interested in soundbites.

She put it plainly:

That reframe matters. Because the headline says Black people are getting laid off at higher rates. But the actual story is that Black people are disproportionately concentrated in roles that companies have already decided are expendable. And those are two very different conversations.

When we stop at the headline, we skip over the harder questions. Why are Black employees clustered in these "easily replaceable" roles in the first place? Who decides which positions are expendable? What does it say about an organization's hiring practices, promotion pipelines, and internal mobility when the roles they cut first just happen to be filled by Black workers?

This is why I care so much about data literacy — not just reading data, but interpreting it. Anyone can share a stat and feel like they've contributed to the conversation. But if you're in HR, if you're in TA, if you're someone who influences hiring and workforce decisions, you have a responsibility to go deeper. To understand what the data is actually revealing versus what makes for easy engagement on social media.

Because when we stop at the soundbite, we let companies off the hook. We keep the conversation surface-level. And the people most affected by these patterns — the ones losing their jobs, the ones stuck in roles with no growth trajectory, the ones who were never given access to the positions that don't get cut — they deserve more than a headline.

Every conversation I've had this Black History Month has reinforced the same thing: the surface-level story is never the full story.

This week, I shared Keirsten's experience walking into a training room as the expert — the person who helped implement the ATS she was there to teach — and being disrespected so badly she had to escalate to the VP. The white guy she was training alongside? They didn't do that to him. And Keirsten already had her master's degree in HR management by then.

Because that's what we're told, right? Get the credentials. Get the degrees. Then they'll have to respect you.

It didn't matter.

The credentials don't protect you. And the data showing you're disproportionately affected doesn't protect you either, not when people only read the headline and move on.

If you're someone who reads headlines about layoffs and diversity and workplace trends, I want to challenge you to go one layer deeper. Don't just share the stat. Ask why. Ask who benefits from the surface-level narrative staying surface-level. Ask what the data is actually showing versus what people want it to show.

Keirsten does this work. She doesn't accept the headline — she digs into the why, asks the uncomfortable questions, and tells the story the data is actually revealing. That's the skill more of us need to develop.

Keirsten and I went deep on this week's episode. We talked about building a platform when people keep underestimating you, the reality of being a Black woman in recruiting, and why she takes data interpretation so seriously.

Listen here:

This one's worth your time. 💖