How We Started
Back in the summer of 1999, amidst the dot com revolution, Chris Russell had an idea. Develop a local, online job board dedicated to Fairfield County employers and jobseekers. Having just gone through a job search himself, Russell found it odd that the larger job boards were lumping in Fairfield County jobs with those in New York City. "I only wanted to work in Fairfield County so I didn't want to see New York listings", said Russell. It was frustrating finding just the jobs he wanted to browse. From this experience FairfieldCountyJobs.com was born.
Today, FairfieldCountyJobs.com is the flagship site of the AllCountyJobs.com LLC network. The site receives over 40,000 weekly visitors and generates over 1 million page views each month.
The success of the Fairfield County site has led the company to develop a network of other job sites. In addition to sites for CT's other top job markets - New Haven County, Hartford County and New London County, there's now WestchesterCountyJobs.com for the New York area that borders Fairfield County. Together, they form the AllCountyJobs.com network of local job sites.
The network has recently expanded to cover NY City, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
The mission of each site is to provide local job listings within the county borders. When it comes to job-hunting people are "location focused" and usually want to work near where they live. "The key to our sites is that people know they'll find only local jobs", says Russell. "Plus since each site is marketed locally we provide a highly targeted audience for employers. These are the people they are most likely to hire".
Employers have been extremely happy with the local focus the sites provide. A quick glance at some of the testimonials Russell has received is proof the concept is working. Tina Feehan of Agentry Staffing writes, "Its great because we get tons of local applicants compared to other sites that give us too many out of state resumes".
Russell prides himself on his customer service that he says keeps his clients loyal and happy. Many clients such as Peoples Bank and the City of Stamford have been with him since the beginning. Recently the HR department at Peoples asked him if they could make a change with how jobseekers apply to their jobs via the site. With a few clicks of coding Russell quickly made it happen. The change now allows jobseekers to be transferred to peoples.com career page so they can better track applicants. Now their HR staff spends less time screening the resumes they used to get since they now come through a central point.
The sites are marketed using a combination of online advertising, local radio, and promotional appearances at local job fairs to maximize exposure across the local labor force. Jobseekers love the sites because they are easy to use and are frequently updated with new jobs. The homepage of each site acts as a gateway and allows the user to browse for jobs either by keyword search, category, city or company name.
In October of 2006, Chris Russell's FairfieldCountyJobs.com was named HR Vendor of the Year by the Southern Connecticut Chapter of SHRM.
