Back in April, as some of you may recall, LinkedIn began to allow users to follow companies listed on the social networking site. In the first phase of the  feature, company profiles were just a way to receive an information stream from the business, similar to Faceboook’s company pages. But now, LinkedIn is offering several new features to companies and the users who follow them.

Here are some highlights:

  • Users can now see how the company has grown over time on LinkedIn as well as profiles of employees at the company
  • Members can also see statistics about the employees’ job functions, educational degrees, years of experience and colleges/universities attended
  • Users can see their connections with the companies and employees, and how the connections changed over time
  • Company profile pages now have a Careers Tab, which gives users a way to quickly check out job listings at companies as well as learn about the hiring practices, and find out the details of other employees at a particular company. Users can also use the career tab to connect with a company’s recruiters directly.

I think these changes are helpful additions for LinkedIn users. They make it much easier to connect with other professionals and learn more about companies as well as find new career opportunities.

What do you think of the changes? Are they useful? Do you see any problems with the upgrades?