The goal of this interview series is to inspire and help people to transition their career into a new or next experimentation related role. In this edition Sjors van Essen shares his journey. He is a Senior Experimentation Cosultant at Albert Heijn (part of Ahold Delhaize).
Experimentation isn’t just about optimizing products, it’s about optimizing how we think, work, and grow. Once you adopt an experimentation mindset, every part of your world becomes open to improvement.
Sjors Van Essen
Please introduce yourself to the readers
Hola! I’m Sjors van Essen, 37 years old. Born in the beautiful city of Deventer and have been living in Amsterdam for about five years now. I’ve been active in the world of Experimentation for around 12 years. Started out on the agency side and now work at Albert Heijn since 2022. Quite a different world, but what an excellent decision that turned out to be!
What is your current experimentation role and what do you do?
I’m part of the Experimentation Team at Albert Heijn (food retailer and part of Ahold Delhaize), operating within the Data Science & Analytics department. Our goal is to further democratize the Experimentation Program across the organization (mostly Tech, Product and Marketing) through training, methodology, tooling, culture, onboarding new teams etc.
Our mission is to make experimentation accessible for everyone within the company. We’re making great progress, but we’re not there yet.
How did you enter the experimentation space? What was your first experimentation related role?
This story always brings a smile to my face, haha. It was over ten years ago when, at a fairly traditional B2B publishing company, I made a proposal to the board. We were busy “changing” our websites, but it was unclear whether those changes actually made things better. “So, what do you suggest, Sjors?” they asked. “Let’s implement VWO and start A/B testing”. Making decisions based on evidence, that was my narrative. One day later, IT had installed the JavaScript-snippet on the websites, and that’s how my first experimentation adventure began.
I’ll admit: there wasn’t much strategy involved, but there were plenty of learnings, failures and also results. We achieved strong impact on subscription growth and gained fascinating insights into how a paywall influences human behavior within our digital products.
How did you start to learn experimentation?
After the adventure at the publishing company, I wanted to gain more experience and be part of a group of people who were further along the experimentation journey than I was. People who were smarter than me. Or at least shared the same philosophy.
I got the chance to build those new experiences at a few fantastic agencies. There, we ran experimentation programs for all kinds of businesses, where you’re given a lot of responsibility, and sometimes I was failing pretty hard. That’s where I really learned to develop my soft skills, as well as grow on a process and hard skill level, in areas like statistics, psychology, and storytelling.
How do you apply experimentation in your personal life? (what are you tinkering with or always optimizing?)
Lately, I’ve been fascinated by my two-year-old son. And yes, I occasionally run a little experiment on him too (book tip: Experimenting with Babies: 50 Amazing Science Projects You Can Perform on Your Kid).
And now, a slightly more serious piece of advice, especially if you’re looking to optimize your personal life. I’ve been practicing Transcendental Meditation every day for over three years now. It brings such calm, peace, and clarity that I have an incredible amount of mental energy left throughout the day. I’ve become much more creative in solving problems. It feels as if my creativity and intelligence are much more connected, something that has also been proven in several studies. So yes, highly recommended!
What are you currently doing to keep up with the ever-changing industry?
Last month, a few colleagues and I took part in a super fun, hands-on training. The goal was to build and automate your own workflow within two days, using AI Agents.
It was a huge eye-opener for me realizing that, as Experimentation Evangelists, our strength isn’t limited to optimizing for products for our customers. We can also genuinely optimize internal processes. And that doesn’t always have to involve a randomized controlled experiment.
I always have to smile when I hear people in our field debating what to call our role or title. CRO, CXO, Experimentation? In my view, that’s completely irrelevant. We’re all optimizers. Everyone optimizes in the interest of the customer and the organization. Think broader, think bigger and most importantly, think about what you can optimize. Then suddenly, the world within your organization becomes much bigger.
What recommendations would you give to someone who is looking to join the experimentation industry and get their first full-time position?
Seek personal contact with someone in the experimentation industry and start asking questions to find out whether it’s something for you and whether it fits your personality and profile.
Based on that information, you’ll also be able to position yourself better for future employers or projects. And once you adopt an experimentation mindset, everyone wants to work with you ;).
Which developments in experimentation excite you? How do you see the field changing in the next 5 to 10 years?
We’re living in insanely fascinating times with the rise of certain technologies. This evolution is already having a huge impact, even in the short term, in the way we work and think. The same goes for Albert Heijn, of course. Think of Causal AI, Agentic AI, and GenAI. Ways to make processes more efficient and even improve the quality of our everyday decision-making in our business.
What won’t change over the next ten years? That we still need to eat every day and Albert Heijn is here to help with that everyday challenge! Did you know we recently launched a meal planner in the app?
Is there anything people reading this can help you with? Or any parting words?
Feel free to reach out to me (e.g. LinkedIn). Especially when it comes to GenAI and Agentic AI, I’m always open to exchange thoughts. Just as we’re working hard to build a culture of experimentation, AI also presents a fascinating challenge. One that’s all about fostering a culture and managing people through these massive changes.
Which other experimenters would you love to read an interview by?
I have to say, I was recently inspired by Manual da Costa. His theory about what he calls “The Trust Gap in Experimentation” really resonated with me and it’s cleverly visualized too. You should look it up on Google. Not exactly a product placement like the meal planner, but definitely worth mentioning ;).
Thank you Sjors for sharing your journey and insights.
