An Internet job search company based in Westbrook wants to expand and add new jobs in the wake of the company’s sale to a New Jersey-based company.

The Journal Register Company of Trenton, N.J., acquired the company, JobsInTheUS, which runs Internet job listing sites throughout New England, last week.

Matt Hoffner, president and chief executive officer of JobsInTheUS, said he has been talking with the Journal Register about the sale since this summer. All of the company’s 39 employees will be staying in place, and Hoffner said plans call for the company to add an unspecified number of new jobs over the coming months.

“We’ve been given direction by our new parent company that they would like us to grow,” Hoffner said, “which would mean a significant increase of jobs here.”

Hoffner said there are no plans to move the company from Westbrook. “We’re here to stay,” he said. “They don’t have any operation that’s remotely like us, so there’s no danger of us getting merged into another center.”

Hoffner said the company is currently talking with Tim Flannery, the owner of the Dana Warp Mill, where the company is currently based, about leasing an additional 6,000 square feet in the mill to accommodate the expanded operations. He said he expects to have the new space shortly after the first of the year.

“It’s a great deal for us,” Hoffner said. “Being affiliated with a publicly traded company gives us the capital to grow quickly.”

JobsInTheUS specializes in state-specific job Internet sites where candidates who want to work in a particular region find a match with local employers. The company runs the Web sites JobsinME.com, JobsinNH.com, JobsinVT.com, JobsinMA.com and JobsinRI.com.

Hoffner said, starting next month, the company will be starting a similar Web site for Connecticut, where the Journal Register company already owns several newspapers. “The question is, where are we going to go after that,” Hoffner said. The company is looking to expand into several more states, he said. He did not have a final list of where the company plans to expand, but he mentioned New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan as possibilities.

Those are all states where the Journal Register Company operates newspapers. Hoffner said the company wants to use JobsInTheUS as a tool to help sell classified advertising, combining the Internet ads with ads in the newspaper.

“This is an exciting acquisition for the Journal Register Company as JobsInTheUS becomes the cornerstone of our expanded online recruitment product,” said Jean Clifton, Journal Register Company president and chief operating officer.

Hoffner said future plans for expansion call for JobsInTheUS to move into states where the Journal Register does not operate newspapers. Currently, the company operates Web sites in three states, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, where the Journal Register doesn’t own newspapers.

“JobsInTheUS has developed an impressive local model in the northeast states and we look forward to working with them to expand in our core markets as well as other markets,” Clifton said.

The Journal Register Company owns 27 daily newspapers in six states. In addition, the company also owns 338 other non-daily newspapers and operates over 200 Web sites that are affiliated with those newspapers.

The terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.