PRPlayers

Supporting Consistent, High-Stakes Assessment for Senior Program Managers

Challenge

Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, developed the PRM (Project and Program Manager) Certification to rigorously assess whether candidates have the right competencies to manage customer-facing projects at a senior level.

This certification process required a practical, standardised method to evaluate how candidates handle complex client relationships and apply project management methodologies in real time.

Project Goals and Objectives

The key goal of the PRM Certification is to ensure Atos can confidently entrust certified individuals with the responsibility of executing high-level customer projects and programs.

The certification aims to serve as a documented quality indicator for a candidate’s:

• Professionalism

• Competence

• Communication and leadership under pressure

Process

To support this process, PRP provided professional role players to portray various types of customers during the certification assessments. This brought an interactive, real-world element to the evaluation, allowing candidates to demonstrate their approach to:

• Stakeholder management

• Conflict resolution

• Strategic communication

• Application of Atos methodologies in live scenarios

Each actor took on a unique customer persona, tailored to test a range of project and program management skills.

Solution

As one of the UK’s leading providers of role players for Assessment Centres, PRP ensured:

• All actors involved in PRM certification had completed both PRP+ Standardisation and PRP+ Feedback training

• Role players delivered consistent, repeatable performances to ensure fairness across candidate assessments

• Constructive feedback was provided to assessors both in and out of character, offering deeper insight into candidate behaviour

We understand that role play consistency is critical to a fair and effective assessment process. Our actors are trained to maintain emotional tone, pacing, and response style across all interactions to ensure direct comparisons between candidates are valid and reliable.

Results

PRP’s involvement has helped Atos achieve:

• A standardised, high-quality assessment framework for senior project and program managers

• Reliable customer interaction simulations that challenge and validate key competencies

• Confidence in the selection of the right individuals for leadership roles

By integrating our PRP+ Standardisation training into the PRM certification process, we’ve enabled Atos to deliver robust, fair, and meaningful assessments at scale -ensuring only the most capable professionals progress to client-facing leadership positions.