Today, South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive opened its panel picker for the 2010 event. I’m thrilled to say that several of the Technically Women have submitted panels for consideration. In support of helping each other — and more women — get the visibility in social media that we deserve, I thought it would help to list where you might find us at SXSW. This way you can vote for us if you so choose.

The thing is, we don’t want you to vote for us simply because we’re women. We want you to vote for us if you think we present good content and ideas about which you want to hear. Here’s a list so you can judge for yourself:

Maggie Fox
Scaling Social Media: Getting Credible Content to Mass Audiences
News 2.0 – How Old Media Companies Are Inventing New Models

Rachel Happe
Building Social Strategies at Fortune 100 Companies

Adele McAlear
Posts Mortem: Death and Digital Legacy

Shireen Mitchell
Is There A Technological Fix for Human Behavior?
Social Media Women of Color

Susan Scrupski
Social Design for Enterprise 2.0

Jennifer Leggio
Inherent Dangers of Real-Time Social Networking
How (Not) to Get Banned on Social Networks!
Hitting Bombs: Better Social Business Through Sports Metaphors

What are some other great proposed panels including or being led by women at SXSWi? Leave a list in the comments.

You’ll see a trend over the first few blog posts. Many of us have decided to write up what it means to us as individuals what it means to be one of the Technically Women.” We come from such different backgrounds but also share a very common goal — creating awareness of shifts in business, technology trends, and we all strive to grow as leaders and mentor more female leaders. Being one of the Technically Women does not mean standing on a soapbox and talking only about gender equality and focusing only on women’s issues. We want to focus on business and technology issues and offer our perspective as women these types of environments. I can’t say it any better than fellow collaborator Rachel Happe did in her introduction post:

So I believe there is a different perspective that women bring to how technology integrates with our lives and our businesses – but it’s often subtle. The concept of Technically Women intrigued me as an opportunity to collaborate with a bunch of whip-smart woman who have interesting perspectives on technology and to see if, over time, that collective ‘voice’ can be better articulated.

As for my part of this, I am a geek who wears a lot of different hats. I’m a marketing geek. I’m a network security geek. I’m even a bit of a business analytics geek. Technically, I’m not as code proficient as some of my other colleagues here, but I am so jazzed to learn and read and come up with themes that touch us all yet inspire such different reactions. We’re dynamic and we’re strong and we have a voice. Technically, isn’t that a big part of what being a woman is about anyway?

Image courtesy of Organizacion LuCHOeDu | CC 2.0 http://www.flickr.com/photos/luchoedu/2452437601/

According ot the survey, due to these satisfaction levels companies are likely to invest more in these type of candidate sources in 2009, trimming down their spend with job boards and even search firms. Here are some more data points:

• 76 percent of companies surveyed plan to invest more in employee referrals
• 72 percent plan to invest more in recruiting through social networks
• 80 percent of companies are planning to use social networks to find or attract candidates
• LinkedIn use grew from 80 percent in 2008 to 95 percent in 2008
• Facebook use grew from 36 percent in 2008 to 59 percent in 2009
• Twitter ranked third at 42 percent

According to Jobvite, however, employee referrals and internal transfers are the most highly rated sources in terms of quality of candidates generated, however, employee involvement in referrals is still low.

More from the survey:

Additionally, recruitment and human resource professionals are using a variety of online sites to research candidates: LinkedIn (76 percent), search engines (67 percent), Facebook (44 percent) and Twitter (21 percent). Respondents reported that 24% of candidates disclose their social networking presence when applying for a job.

It appears based on Jobvite’s data that while cost savings of using social networks versus job boards and the like are a driver for this move, quality is a larger consideration. But are companies sacrificing a more human element by relying on social networks?

“It is my belief that recruiting is a dying profession in its current form. As the use of social media becomes ubiquitous, there will no longer be a need,” said Jennifer Wojcik, CEO of YouGuru LLC. “I often consult with my smaller clients on how to engage with candidates via these channels.”

Wojcik also says that she herself leverages social networks to find candidates and there’s rarely a need to pay for a job search board these days.

“Social media enables me to build that initial network and make connections thousands of times faster than picking up a phone book and a phone calling into my client’s competitors,” she said. “I also put calls out on Twitter when I have a position to fill…this basically enables my network to identify candidates for me that I would otherwise not had access to. Facebook serves a similar purpose.

“It is a rare case that I would be forced to actually advertise a position. Generally speaking, using my methods, I can have fully screened candidates for a client within two to three days. This is weeks faster than other agencies who use no social media and choose to advertise only.”

Read the full survey.

Originally posted on ZDNet