New Delhi, Feb. 28 -- Top managers at LTIMindtree Ltd must clear a competency exam as part of the company's annual appraisal exercise, possibly the first in the country's $286 billion IT industry.

For project leads, managers and lead architects, half the weight in appraisals depends on project completion, and the rest on a competency exam with multiple-choice questions on coding and mathematics. According to four LTIMindtree employees, this is under a new framework called My Career My Growth, introduced last year for senior executives, and expanded to include more employees this year.

"This competency exam is a skill-based exam that gets tougher as you get more experienced," one of the four employees said on the condition of anonymity....