Gil Maher is allergic to nuts. Specifically walnuts and almonds, but for the soon-to-be Planters Mr. Peanut, he’s in luck. Peanuts are legumes.

In March, Maher received news that he had been hired by Kraft Foods Group to go on a yearlong tour in the NUTmobile, a large, automatic vehicle in the shape of a giant yellow peanut. After graduating from Syracuse University on May 10, the senior policy studies major will travel to Madison, Wisconsin in June to begin training.

“They didn’t cover this in any of my classes, so it doesn’t really relate to my major,” Maher said. “That’s not a bad thing, though. It’s like I’m taking a year off to travel, and I’m getting paid to do it, and I don’t feel like I’m being a bum. Also it’ll be a lot of fun.”

For the past two summers, Maher worked for Zipcar in the Washington, D.C. area. When discussing what he was doing after graduation, his boss Kacee Robbins encouraged him to apply to work for the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile — a job she held when she first graduated from college.

So he applied online. Robbins helped him out and emailed a recommendation to her previous boss at Kraft. It was tough though, he said, because the company usually goes out and recruits at big state schools like the University of Missouri or Pennsylvania State University. Maher was different.

“I just sent an email with my resume, and I was like ‘Hi, I’m interested in the position,” he said. “Then I got a phone call in February, and they wanted to do a phone interview. They overnight packaged a recruitment video and an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile package, then they called me and I interviewed for that.”

The phone interview went all right, he said. Then it was time to wait. Two days before he left for a trip to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park where he would be without cellphone or Internet service for a week, he got the call. The news couldn’t have come at a better time.

“When I got the phone call saying I got the interview in Chicago, I was sitting in Whitman (School of Management) looking at my computer screen, looking at my email like, ‘No one wants me to work for them. I don’t have a job.’ I got so stressed out,” Maher said. “Then I got a phone call and it’s the Madison (Wisconsin) area code and I thought, ‘Here comes the Wienermobile saying I didn’t get it.’”

When he picked up the phone, he was right. He didn’t get the job as a representative for Oscar Mayer, but he did get a callback to work for Planters. He was flown out to the Kraft headquarters in Chicago for two days of interviews. The first thing he saw when he walked into the office was a giant figurine of the iconic red Kool-Aid man, bursting through the gray walls of the lobby.

Two things set the interview apart from the otherwise standard questions: one was when he was asked to write a sample blog post for Mr. Peanut. He tried to include as many nut puns as he could.

The second came on day two when the interviewer asked if he went out with the other six interviewees the night before.

“They were sort of watching the way that we interacted with each other, so when they recommended that we go out and go to the bar, I was like, ‘All right,’” Maher said. “I talked to my boss, and she said to definitely go out, because they want people that are social and can go meet new people they’ve never met before.”

At the bar, he worked the room. He talked to his competitors. In the end, two girls and one boy would be chosen for each of the three routes: West Coast, East Coast and Central United States.

Maher was hired in late March, but still doesn’t know which of the three routes he will be taking yet. He would prefer to see the West Coast since he’s never traveled through it before. The East Coast would be “cool” too, and he if got it he would definitely make a stop in Syracuse, he said.

Throughout the process, his family and friends have been very supportive. In April, even though he wasn’t supposed to let anyone know, he whispered to his friend Christian Bernlohr while sitting in chapter for his fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, that he got the job. Bernlohr stood up, told the news to the group and the boys yelled and cheered in congratulations.

“When Gil got the news he would be working for the NUTmobile, I thought it was the coolest thing ever,” said Bobby O’Brien, a senior television, radio and film major and fellow Phi Delta Theta member. O’Brien is also a contributing videographer for The Daily Orange.

“My parents came and visited and we went out to dinner, and I brought it up. They were asking me if he got the job with Oscar Mayer, but he got the NUTmobile, so when you have an opportunity like that, obviously he had to take it,” O’Brien said.

At peanut prep, he will learn how to drive the NUTmobile, he’ll get the passwords to the Instagram and Twitter accounts, and, finally, get trained on how to act in the Mr. Peanut suit. He even has his own nut name, Bra-Gil-Nut, like a Brazil nut, he said.

Maher said if he didn’t land the job as Mr. Peanut, he would currently be looking for an internship in D.C. or working for the city of Pittsburgh, his hometown.

Like any college graduate, he would be trying to figure out what to do after he walks the stage. But Maher’s got a job and he’s got a plan.

“When is there a better chance to do this? There’s no better chance,” Maher said. “I’d say I’m excited. It’ll be cool to get out there. It’ll be cool to see the country. It (college) felt like four years. I wish there was maybe another month of good weather, but not another four years.”

Published on May 7, 2015 at 8:00 am

Contact: kasotelo@syr.edu