A quarter century ago, the road to the corner office was fairly well-defined. You graduated from a top college. You joined an IIM and majored in marketing. After two years of networking for the future, you applied to a top-notch company (generally an MNC).

There you went through the entrance grind ? group discussions, interviews and more personal interactions. At ITC, for instance, you were invited for lunch with the top brass. (The network had already told you not to take a papad. You couldn?t eat it without making noises and that would automatically disqualify you.) Then, with a little bit of help from your family background, you were all set to make it to the fast lane. After decades with the same company, you were duly anointed the Grand Panjandrum.

?The keywords are all there,? says Mumbai-based HR consultant Shashi Rao. ?Top college, IIM, marketing, networking, family, continuity of service, age. These were the qualifications that paved the way for a CEOs job in the future.?

But times have changed. ?The college is not very material today,? adds Rao. ?The IIM stamp doesn?t go such a long way either.?

What is more important is that marketing is out. Instead, finance is hot. IT (or systems, as it is called) takes you some way in the beginning. But it is easy to get bogged down in bits and bytes; the era of the CIO (chief information officer) as CEO has yet to dawn. Networking and family connection still count. You can?t legislate out nepotism.

?What you are seeing here is what has been happening in the West over the past few years,? says Rao. ?It will happen here too. But the time-lag will be much shorter.?

A recent US study ? The Path to the Top: Changes in the Attributes of Corporate Executives 1980 to 2001? spells out the new rules. According to the authors Peter Cappelli and Monika Hamori: ?Today?s executives are younger, more likely to be female, and less likely to have Ivy League educations. They make their way to the executive suite faster than ever before, and they hold fewer jobs along the way. They spend about five years less in their current organisation before being promoted, and are more likely to be hired from the outside.? The Organisation Man, say the authors, is on the endangered list.

Chief Executive magazine, in its 2004 annual Route to the Top survey, says that global experience is very important. Plus, a CEO is more likely to be a jack of all trades rather than an expert in one discipline or industry.

Incidentally, China is at the top of the list of countries to work in. India is not top of mind. But it should be getting there soon.

The Chief Executive survey also found that people are making it faster to the top and that an Ivy League education does not matter as much as in the past.

Rao draws on these surveys for a spot of advice for Indian CEO wannabes. ?Forget the US,? she says. ?If I were you, I would get myself an assignment in China, Russia or Latin America. I would major in finance but take up a job in marketing. And I would tell the guys at ITC exactly what they can do with their papad test.? If she had stayed on in industry, she would surely have been in the corner office by now.