Boutique Executive Search & Career Advisory

Where great
careers are made.

Talent Gravy is a boutique advisory firm that works both sides of the hiring table. We partner with organizations on the hires that matter most, and with professionals navigating the moves that define a career. Patient. Principled. Relentlessly human.

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2⁺

Decades in Talent

2^↔

Sides of the Table

100^%

Principal-Led

Our Approach

Hiring isn't a transaction. It's a relationship.

We believe the right match feels inevitable in hindsight. Finding it never is.

Talent Gravy was founded on a conviction the industry keeps forgetting: great hires are made by humans who pay attention, not by keyword scrapers, not by volume funnels, not by quarterly placement quotas. Every search we take, every résumé we shape, every interview we coach is handled at principal level, with the time it actually deserves.

Our clients come to us after being burned by the other kind of recruiter. What they stay for is the standard: we take fewer engagements so we can take each of them seriously. We tell you what we see, even when it isn't what you wanted to hear. And we don't close a search or a coaching engagement until the fit is right.

Principal-Led, Always

You never get handed off to a junior associate. Meghan leads every engagement personally from first call to final offer.

Quality Over Quantity

We cap our active engagements so every client gets the deep attention that high-stakes hiring and career moves deserve.

Both Sides of the Table

We recruit for companies and coach individuals. That dual perspective makes every search sharper and every career strategy smarter.

Meghan Calalesina

Founder & President

Meet the Founder

Decades of listening, and a firm built to prove it matters.

Meghan Calalesina · Founder & President

Meghan spent the better part of two decades inside talent, leading global recruiting at software companies, building teams from zero, and advising candidates at every level from individual contributor to the C-suite. What she kept noticing was the same quiet failure: brilliant people being missed, urgent roles being filled with the wrong person, and a whole industry that had stopped listening.

She founded Talent Gravy in 2021 to do this work differently: a principal-led firm that treats hiring the way the best advisors treat any high-stakes decision: with patience, with taste, and with a refusal to paper over what really matters. She leads every engagement personally and curates a network of trusted specialists, researchers, and coaches who join when a search or engagement calls for it.

Based in Buffalo, New York, Meghan and the Talent Gravy team partner with organizations and professionals across the country. The practice grows the way all good practices grow: by referral, by reputation, and by keepers who keep calling us back.

What We Believe

Six convictions that shape every engagement.

This is the ethic that runs through every search, every résumé rewrite, every late-stage negotiation. If these read like what you've been looking for, we'll probably work well together.

Résumés don't hire résumés.

People hire people. The whole process should look and feel more human than it usually does. Warmth is not unprofessional. It's the entire point.

A keeper is not a profile.

Keywords and titles describe a career. They don't describe a person. We look for fit, drive, and the quiet qualities a job description forgets to mention.

Hard-to-fill means re-think.

A role that won't fill is usually telling you something about the search, the story, or the strategy. We rebuild the approach rather than push harder on the same tactic.

Careers are story problems.

Most job-search struggles aren't about credentials. They're about narrative. When the story gets clear, everything downstream (résumé, interview, offer) falls into place.

There is no algorithm for fit.

Automation is wonderful at scheduling. It is hopeless at judgment. If you want the right match, someone has to actually pay attention. That's the whole job.

Gravy makes everything better.

The right support at the right moment isn't optional. It's the difference between a job and your job. That's the name. That's the promise. Show up, do the work, enjoy the gravy.

What We Do

One firm. Two doors in.

Same practice, same care, same people, whether you're filling a leadership seat or chasing the next chapter of your own story. Choose your door. (And plenty of clients end up walking through both.)

If You're Hiring

Door No. 01

Executive Search

Retained and project-based search for the roles that matter most, and the roles your internal team hasn't been able to fill.

We partner with founders, CEOs, CHROs, and hiring managers on searches where pattern-matching and keyword soup won't cut it. Executive, director, and hard-to-fill specialist seats. High-trust industries. First-of-their-kind roles. Teams being built from scratch. The common thread: you can't afford to get this one wrong.

Retained executive & leadership search
Hard-to-fill specialist roles and first-chair hires
Project-based and embedded recruiting support
Start-up and scale-up team builds
Strategic sourcing & passive-candidate outreach
Candidate experience & hiring-process design

Start a search

If You're Looking

Door No. 02

Career Strategy

One-on-one advisory for professionals who are tired of guessing and ready to show up like the senior candidate they already are.

Think of it as hiring a recruiter who is working for you for once. We sharpen the story, rebuild the résumé, rehearse the interview until it stops feeling like interrogation, and negotiate the offer so you don't leave money (or equity, or PTO, or a starting title) on the table.

Résumé writing & professional positioning
Career narrative & pivot strategy
Interview preparation & executive presence coaching
Salary & full-offer negotiation
Job-search strategy, targeting & outreach
First-90-days onboarding & leadership coaching

Book a consult

How We Work

A process shaped around you.

Every engagement is different: different stakes, different stories, different rooms. But the arc is always the same: listen first, build the strategy, execute with care, set you up to thrive long after the offer is signed.

Discover

A deep-dive conversation to understand the role, the ideal candidate, or your own story, your goals, and the gap between them.

Strategize

A tailored plan: sourcing strategy, positioning, messaging, and the right path from where you are today to where you want to land.

iii

Execute

Hands-on partnership: sourcing, interviewing, coaching, refining. Calibrated weekly, never on autopilot. You stay in the loop the whole way.

Thrive

The right fit made, the offer landed, the first ninety days supported. The measure of our work is not the start date. It's the year that follows.

Capabilities

The full picture of what we bring to the room.

Every Talent Gravy engagement draws from this toolkit, developed across decades on both sides of the hiring table.

Executive & Leadership Search

Hard-to-Fill Specialist Roles

iii

Start-Up & Scale-Up Team Builds

Strategic Sourcing & Research

Résumé Writing & Positioning

Interview Preparation

vii

Salary & Offer Negotiation

viii

Career Strategy & Coaching

Professional Brand & Online Presence

Candidate Experience Design

Hiring-Process Consulting

xii

First-90-Days Onboarding

Industries We Serve

Technology & SaaS

Professional Services

Healthcare & Life Sciences

Manufacturing

Financial Services

Non-Profit & Mission-Driven

Start-Ups & Venture-Backed

Education & Higher Ed

Good Questions

The things clients usually ask.

Don't see yours? Email info@talentgravy.com. We answer every inquiry personally.

What does Talent Gravy actually do?

We're a boutique advisory firm that works both sides of the hiring table. For organizations, we run retained and project-based executive searches on the roles that matter most. For professionals, we provide one-on-one career strategy: résumé, positioning, interview prep, offer negotiation, and more. Same people, same standard, two doors in.

You work with companies and individuals. Isn't that a conflict?

It's the opposite. Nobody understands what makes a great candidate stand out like a team that spends every day helping candidates do exactly that. And nobody understands what professionals actually need to break through like a team that sits in the hiring-manager's chair. The two sides sharpen each other, and no individual client is ever matched to a company we're currently searching for. That wall is clean.

How is Talent Gravy different from a typical recruiter?

Most recruiters are paid to close fast. We're paid to close right. We take a smaller number of searches at any given time, we learn the organization before we source a single name, and we do not send candidates whose backs we can't personally vouch for. If you want volume, we're not your firm. If you want the right person, we probably are.

Who actually does the work on my engagement?

Every Talent Gravy engagement is led personally by Meghan Calalesina, our Founder & President. She brings in a curated network of researchers, specialists, and coaches when the scope of a search or career engagement calls for additional horsepower. You always know who is on your account and you always get the principal.

What industries do you specialize in?

Our bench is especially deep in technology, software, and high-growth environments, but the method travels. We've worked with clients across professional services, healthcare-adjacent organizations, manufacturing, mission-driven non-profits, and early-stage start-ups. The qualifying question isn't industry; it's whether the role genuinely matters and whether we'll enjoy working together.

Where are you based? Do you work remotely?

We're headquartered in Buffalo, New York, and the practice is remote-first by design. Kickoff conversations, candidate interviews, and coaching sessions all happen by video. For clients in Western New York, we're happy to meet in person whenever it's useful.

What does an engagement cost?

It depends on the shape of the work. Executive search is structured as a retained or project-based fee tied to scope. Career-side engagements range from à-la-carte projects (a résumé rewrite, an interview-prep sprint) to multi-month advisory packages. We walk you through the options on our first call, and there's never a pitch before there's a plan.

How do we start?

An email or a phone call. There's no gate, no gatekeeping, no five-stage discovery funnel. Tell us what you're solving for and we'll find out, in one conversation, whether we're the right firm to help.

Connect With Talent Gravy

Free Consultation

Let's start a conversation.

No gatekeepers. No discovery funnels. Just a direct line to someone who can help. Reach out however works best for you.

info@talentgravy.com

We respond within one business day

Phone

716.345.0577

Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm ET

Email Talent Gravy Call Now