There was a time, not so long ago, when you joined the Indian Foreign Service if you were struck by wanderlust. Today, the easier way to see the world is not as a diplomat, but as a computer geek. Nearly every big software firm sends its employees abroad for training, projects and postings. And the world — from the United States to China to Brazil — is opening up for the software professional.

But life for a globetrotting software nerd is not an easy one. After all, the geek’s world is far removed from the wine-quaffing, fork-and-knife holding realm of the foreign office. But do not despair. Help is at hand. Finishing schools for computer whizzkids have sprung up, to teach them all about decorum and deportment.

Bangalore-based Shridhar Swami knows the importance of such training. Some years ago, Swami had been flown to California to broker a multi-million dollar business contract that his software company was in the process of negotiating with a foreign firm.

The dinner — over which the deal was to be struck — was a disaster. Though Swami had come all dressed up in what he thought was his best brown suit, his brain overflowing with all the figures that he hoped to quote to impress the clients, he realised soon enough that he had little to say when the talk veered round to anything outside the IT industry. Swami didn’t know how to conduct small talk.

And not just that, he was flummoxed when he saw the table laden with forks, knives and spoons. Which one was the soup spoon, and was that a fish knife, or a butter knife? Swami used a spoon for his seven-course meal. And the deal fell through.

Some time later, he enrolled for a compulsory, company-sponsored personality-grooming course at the Academy for Corporate Excellence (ACE) in Bangalore. He learnt that software skills alone don’t swing business deals — especially with foreigners. Soft skills are important, and a brown suit — the butt of many Indian-centric jokes in the West — is not.

Client-interface with international firms has become a vital part of a techie’s job. What to wear is important — and, not surprisingly, IT major Infosys made it compulsory for its employees to be dressed in formals twice a week. “Western clients are as particular about dressing and decorum as they are about technical skills,” says ACE head Padmini Nagachandra.

There’s a growing interest in grooming schools for techies. Nagachandra’s ACE has seven centres across Bangalore. Also, Bangalore’s Zeal Institute of Personal Development claims to have a steady inflow of software and management students signing up for its courses. Edge Academy, which once operated from a two-room apartment in Bangalore, has now expanded. It has a new institute called the Edge Finishing School.

Sudhir Udayakanth, the head of Edge Academy, recalls the problems he faced when he launched his grooming school three years ago. “Business was dull those days. I ran dry for a long time,” he says. But the times, clearly, have changed.

“I tutor techies on the fine points of corporate dressing,” says Udayakanth. This includes instructions about which fingers to wear rings on, how far down the tie should go, and why not to buy belts that scream out their brand names. And students are also urged not to allow that blue Reynolds pen cap to peep out of a shirt pocket.

For travel, techies have to be careful about what they wear where. “In India, all clothes and colours work fine. But Westerners are not so accommodating,” says Nagachandra. Every country follows unwritten, though strict, colour norms — so no bright colours in England and no yellows in the West Asia, please. India’s software champs are discovering that colour codes are as crucial to professional success as computer codes.

The get-groomed syndrome is spilling into Bangalore’s business schools as well. The People’s Education Society Institute of Technology (PESIT) — one of the top B-schools in the city — has a personality development programme in its course curriculum. “In today’s world, first impressions are made in 15 seconds,” says a management professor at PESIT.

Travel, as they say, broadens the mind. But software professionals are making sure that the mind — along with the image — gets suitably honed even before they pack their bags.