About three months ago, I reluctantly decided to attach a photo to my Linkedin profile. It took me all of two minutes to sit in front on my MacBook, snap the picture, and post on my profile.

Many colleagues immediately provided feedback - none of it good. They said my picture looked unprofessional (it was fuzzy) and would hamper my networking efforts. Disbelieving, I wondered if a low quality picture could actually have that kind of effect.

As someone who believes in the value of networking and LinkedIn, I submitted to the pressure and hired a professional photographer to take a "glamour shot". For $350, he promised to make me look human. It was actually a fairly painless experience and I was happy with the result.

This experience made me wonder just how important a profile photo is for networking on LinkedIn? I decided to post the question in four separate LinkedIn Groups, each with a different focus (Sales, Marketing, HR, and Training). Here's what I learned from the post:

• 29 people responded that a photo is important, 3 people believe a photo is unimportant
• A few others made arguments that were so circular that I couldn't tell which way they were voting
• All marketing people voted yes, only two sales people voted not important
• This topic is not very interesting to the training crowd with only two voting yes and one voting no
• No HR people responded. Maybe they were afraid the question was not politically correct

I also received research data from linked in that claimed a profile with a professional picture is five times more likely to get a positive response.

My takeaway - Because so much of our current interactions are on-line, we need to be cognizant of making a good first impression. A decent picture will reflect a positive image and help you make it past the first cut. People are making snap judgments about your value - the picture is the first thing they see. Maybe this is not fair but it is the truth.