As if completing a gruelling engineering degree was not enough, a new generation of globetrotting Indian IT workers faces extra schooling on how to deal with British quirks of business.

Most of India's large technology companies run “finishing schools”, where graduates who are going to work in the West are taught how to dress (no white socks with black shoes), eat (no belching at the table; use a knife and fork, not your hands) and speak (to remedy the habit of young Indians saying yes when they mean no).

Britain can be a bemusing place for somebody brought up in rural India - more so if they have to deal with the foibles of a FTSE 100 chief executive, according to Girish Vaidya, of Infosys, India's second-largest software exporter.

“We are talking about 20-year-olds who have not been exposed to the wider India, let alone the wider world,” he says. “These guys, they need to be groomed.”

Preparing tens of thousands of engineering graduates for their exposure to foreign cultures is often called “soft-skills training”.

Krish Ganesan, of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the largest private-sector employer in India, says: “Every year 14,000 of our new employees are put through a rigorous initial 58-day programme. It's here that we break them.”

The course covers all kinds of practical tips. At Infosys, recruits learn to tie a tie; at TCS, those brought up in southeast India, where it is common to smear yourself with mustard oil when you feel a cold coming on, are schooled on how the resulting fragrance might put off a client in southeast England.

Convergys, an Indian IT company, tutors new entrants on topics ranging from the avoidance of Indianisms (such as “why because”) and SMS-speak (such as “U R” for “you are”) in e-mails to clients, to the finer points of “how to sit down to a seven-course dinner”.

It is estimated that, at most, half the engineering graduates churned out by the sub-continent's universities are immediately employable.

Companies say that the need for soft-skills training often points to the shortcomings of the Indian education system. They also chime with stories relayed by UK executives who fail to connect with teams of Indian workers.

Many UK bosses claim, for instance, that Indian employees often give misguiding information on project completion dates.

“Indians are not used to saying no,” Mr Ganesan says. “They think it's rude - you don't say no to your parents or your teachers. Generally, in the Indian education system, disagreeing is not allowed, so when they are asked in the workplace whether they can do something by a certain date, they tend to say yes - even if they can't.”

India's highly competitive university system engenders other behaviour that does not sit well in an office environment.

Infosys boasts that if you look at the success rates of its job applicants it is easier to get a place at Harvard than to win a position at the company. Indian engineering schools put a similar emphasis on individual attainment.

To excel, you have to elbow your classmates aside. This, Indian outsourcing companies acknowledge, means new graduates generally do not work well in teams.

Sreekala Ramamurthy, the head of talent transformation at Wipro, the third-largest Indian IT services group, says: “In the Indian education system, the focus is on coming first in the class. That's not very helpful for teamwork. We take the view that if you come first, then Wipro doesn't come first.”

Mr Vaidya said: “In a class of 40, perhaps ten will go to an elite engineering university. That means you have to outsmart 30 others. It's not always so wise to outsmart a client.”

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