Pinacrest Talent Partners advises growing employers on the harder questions of hiring, retention and organizational design — with the discipline of a boutique firm and the reach of a national network.
Founded in Parsippany in 2014 by Diedra Grady, Pinacrest was built on a straightforward premise: the best hiring decisions come from operators who have actually sat in the seat. We are a compact team of HR generalists, former recruiters and organizational psychologists working almost exclusively with owner-operated and family-held businesses across New Jersey, New York and eastern Pennsylvania.
We favor long relationships over transactional retainers, and we say so plainly when a search or restructuring isn't the right answer. That candor is how we've kept clients on our roster for a decade or more.
Our work sits where recruitment, HR advisory and organizational design overlap. Clients typically engage us for one discipline and expand from there as trust is built.
Confidential, research-led searches for VP, C-suite and operational leadership roles in mid-market firms across the Northeast.
Ongoing counsel for founders and CEOs without a dedicated Chief People Officer — policy, compensation, employee relations.
Structured interviewing, behavioral assessments and reference-work that reduce mis-hire risk on senior positions.
Region- and industry-specific pay studies, incentive plan design, and equity guidance for privately-held companies.
Team topology, reporting structures and succession planning for growing operations preparing for their next stage.
Dignified outplacement and coaching for employees during restructuring — a service we provide at cost.
We do not send resumes. Every engagement starts with a listening period, and ends with a written report the client can act on for years — not just a hire.
Two to three sessions with founders and key stakeholders to map the real problem, not the presenting one.
Compensation, workflow and interview data are collected and benchmarked against comparable Northeast employers.
Search, redesign or advisory work proceeds on a fixed weekly cadence with named consultants — never a delegated junior team.
A 12-month check-in is included in every engagement to measure real outcomes and adjust course if needed.
We work best with organizations of 30 to 900 employees where a single senior hire genuinely moves the business. Below are the sectors where we've built the deepest bench of candidates and case studies.
Law firms, accounting practices and boutique consulting groups across northern New Jersey.
Ambulatory care networks, medical device firms and specialty clinics.
Family-held manufacturers and distribution operators serving the Port of New York/New Jersey.
Registered investment advisors, community banks and mid-market insurance brokerages.
General contractors, developers and property management firms in the tri-state region.
Independent schools, foundations and community-serving non-profits.
Multi-unit retailers, hospitality groups and consumer product companies.
Bootstrapped and lightly-funded technology firms scaling their first commercial teams.
"Diedra and her team helped us hire our first Chief Operating Officer after two failed searches with a national firm. Their reference work alone was worth the fee. Three years in, she's still with us — and still the right call."
"Pinacrest does not oversell. They talked us out of an executive hire we were determined to make, ran an org design engagement instead, and saved us the better part of a year of pain."
"We use them for annual comp benchmarking and it has quietly become the most useful report we get all year. Clear, defensible, and always on time."
"Their outplacement service treated our departing employees the way we would have wanted to. That mattered to the people who stayed as much as to those who left."
All executive search work is fully retained. For fractional HR advisory we work on a fixed monthly fee, and for one-time projects like compensation benchmarking we quote a flat fee before we begin. We do not accept contingent placement work — it doesn't line up with the depth of research our clients expect.
We regularly take on single-project engagements starting at $9,500 — typically a compensation study, a targeted talent assessment, or a short organizational review. From there many clients move into a fractional advisory relationship.
Yes. Our client base is concentrated in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, but we've completed searches as far south as Virginia and as far north as coastal Maine. Our research team works remotely and travel for finalist interviews is included in every retained engagement.
No. We do not maintain a public candidate database and we do not accept unsolicited resumes for placement. If you're a candidate looking to speak with us about a specific engagement we are running, please write to jobs@lexpinayasociados.com.
Ninety to one hundred and twenty days from kickoff to signed offer for most VP and C-suite roles. Highly specialized or geographically restricted searches occasionally run longer, and we're transparent about that during scoping.
Every retained search includes a twelve-month replacement guarantee at no additional fee. It's rarely used, but we think it's the honest way to price the work.
