Reno employment firm launches public sector division

Marie C.S.

Soucie has been in the placement business long enough to know what smart companies do when they happen upon good people they find a way to put them to work.

And so her Reno-based firm,MCSS Ltd., in short order has launched a division to specialize in recruiting for public sector positions and launched yet another division to specialize in technical positions.

In both cases, Soucie said one recent afternoon, the decision to add divisions was almost entirely a matter of finding the right person to head it.

The public sector division, for instance, is headed by Jim Weston, who worked 32 years for the City of Reno including more than three years as police chief before he retired from the city.

Weston and Soucie had known each other as Rotarians, and casual conversations gradually evolved into a new division for MCSS Ltd.

Wanda Mattson, meanwhile, will head the company's technical recruitment division.

She'll be headquartered in Tucson (Recruiting for technical positions, she says, is a virtual sort of business.) and looking to build business in Arizona for other MCSS divisions as well.

Mattson and Soucie are longtime friends who only recently decided to work together.

"It's all in the timing," Soucie said.

Weston said the new public-sector division will handle executive-level recruitment and provide temporary staff to government agencies.

And he said recent retirees who might face pension penalties if they returned to work in the public sector instead may be employed by MCSS, which in turn will contract with government agencies for the retirees' services.

Weston said MCSS is the first placement firm in the region to focus on public-sector positions, and he noted the public sector increasingly faces tough competition for workers from the booming private sector.

Mattson, whose degree from the University of Wyoming includes the unlikely combination of physics and journalism, previously worked 20 years in management positions with Fortune 1000 companies.

Before Soucie's firm launched the two new divisions, it specialized in executive recruitment, placement and temporary employment in office, light manufacturing and medical fields.

The firm was launched by Soucie in the Bay Area in 1987.