Read the empowering career story of this downsized worker, who -- though semi-retired -- would still like to leverage a lifetime of experience into a new career at age 63. Also included are the suggestions and resources from the Quintessential Careers team -- for this job-seeker and any other job-seeker facing a similar situation.

by Allen, as told to Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.

Up to age 16, Pennsylvania-born Allen dreamed of being a fighter pilot, but that ambition was quashed when he found out he needed glasses. Before moving from Texas to California, he served in the US Army from 1965 to 1969, including a tour in Viet Nam. In 1974, Allen found work as a electrician while taking a correspondence course in electronics.

"That knowledge let me design, install and service burglar alarms, fire alarms, closed-circuit TV systems, and access controls (key-pad and magnetic-card entry system)." After being laid off as an electrician, Allen started his own burglar-alarm business in 1979, a move he calls the biggest single influence on his career. "After working for other small and large companies," Allen explains, "I had developed a lot of 'this is the right way to run a business' ideas, and my own business gave me a chance to try them out and lead in a practical 'lab' [with] what really worked."

At the time of his layoff as an electrician, Allen was qualifying for his contractor's license, and a friend in the business let Allen work under his license. "After a few months, he offered me a chance to buy into his existing alarm business with no money and payments based on the increase in the business income," Allen relates. "When he wanted to retire, I couldn't afford to buy him out, so we sold to a third party," Allen says. But the knowledge Allen had gained as an entrepreneur continued to boost his career.

"Starting and selling a successful business demonstrated to future employers my qualifications as a manager, my ability to work with little supervision, and my creative problem-solving," Allen says. He explains that after he sold his business, "I applied for a job with a very large aerospace contractor as site manager, maintaining electronic equipment for the US Army. The fact that I had taught myself light programing and had managed a successful small business - with that background, I was hired," he explains.

Brought on by the defense contractor in 1983, Allen was promoted twice, to special projects in 1989, and ultimately to manager of the worldwide maintenance of equipment to the US Army in 1991. "I was fortunate to work for a supervisor who was a mentor and gave me projects that stretched my knowledge," Allen recalls. "His boss was also a mentor who pulled me in to work on special projects that expanded my knowledge and prepared me for promotion." But eventually Allen encountered a major crisis in that job.

"My boss told me not to consider a candidate for a senior engineering position because of race," Allen explains. "After reporting his directions to the corporate reporting process, my duties were stripped away over a period of months, and I was eventually fired through a manipulated layoff. My biggest mistake was trusting the corporate system to protect me, as they claimed it would. As a result I lost my job and never again worked at that level." Allen was forced to change career fields, and more than 10 years elapsed before he brought his salary back to the same level as it had been.

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"Faced with the same situation, I would have not made the report," Allen says. "I would have changed jobs years earlier when I recognized that this was how the division was being managed."

Allen and his family were forced to relocate out of the town where the layoff occurred because of death threats but still had to be close enough for court appearances. After two years - and just days before the case went to trial - the company settled out of court.

"I had been looking for a job like the one I held before the 'layoff,' and after two years was still unemployed," Allen continues. Failing to find work as a project manager, Allen switched fields to technical writing in 1997 "since I had written manuals and training classes as part of my previous job." Allen worked through temp agencies and finally obtained a full-time permanent job in 2002 with a large aerospace defense contractor as a lead writer managing three teams of writers supporting various products. However, as technology made it possible to ship this kind of work overseas, and increasing numbers of technical-writing projects went offshore, the work dwindled. The company finally closed its writing group, and in 2004 Allen was again laid off.

"Picking this career field was a poor choice," Allen says, "but as the economy started contracting in about 2000, culminating in the apparent recession of 2008, jobs were scarce and career-field changes even harder."

"I started a home handyman repair business because I couldn't find work without moving again, and my wife had a great job," Allen recalls. In 2006, he was offered a short-term project for a customer of the company that had laid him off in 2004. "As each project was completed," he says, "this customer kept assigning new projects with breaks between projects of up to six months." Allen notes that his work as an independent technical writer pays his bills, but he's right back in the same pattern he experienced at 35 - get hired, work the project, get laid off. He is currently writing a maintenance manual and illustrated parts catalog for a US jet-engine manufacturer. By maintaining a Web page, Allen wisely raises his visibility so clients can find him.

Allen, who calls Arizona home, feels that the biggest obstacle in his career has been his lack of a four-year degree. "As a college student in 1964," he says, "the classes were all 'foundational,' that is the knowledge you need to learn [for] the next class - and I wanted to learn how to do stuff now, not in three or four years." After his marriage and service in Viet Nam, he found he didn't have the motivation to work and go to school.

Instead, Allen reads textbooks on his own. "I have found that I can read the book and get the information to do the work in a month or so. The class that teaches me the same information takes four to five months, and I don't have that much time because I need to do the work now."

Looking to the future, Allen says he'd like to start his own business but hasn't found the right opportunity yet. "While my skills and experience help me to manage a business well, they don't constitute a business [the way] working as an electrician allows someone to start an electrical contracting business," he says.

Allen says he would also love to go back to the job he had in 1995. "I loved special-project management. I had a chance to create training classes, manage product-improvement projects, develop retrofit kits for fielded equipment, and that was a very exciting time." It was also during this period when Allen says he achieved his proudest accomplishment, helping mentor four employees who were later promoted from electronics technicians to project managers. Later, he had an entry-level technical writer promoted to the next level. "My biggest successes have been the people I have helped."

Allen feels that other people's perceptions are roadblocks to returning to project-management work. "I have been out of the field since 1995, and in that time a college degree is now a requirement. I would be 68 when I get the degree, and I just don't have the motivation to face four years of classroom. I still have all the abilities I had in 1995, plus a lot more, but with 12 years out of the field and no degree, HR people won't look at me."

Allen keeps busy in his semi-retired state by building an 18-foot wooden sailboat and expanding his writing skills by writing a blog.

Allen's advice to others is based on his own bittersweet experiences:

• "First, get a degree. A degree has now become a union card and finding meaningful work without one will be next to impossible. As a child of the 50s I didn't recognize the changes in the work place that pushed demonstrated talent and ability behind formal education until much too late in my working life. At some point in the mid to late 1980s there was a shift in hiring from experience to formal education."
• "Second, if faced with corporate misconduct, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, RUN, DO NOT WALK, TO THE NEAREST EXIT! Don't fight for what's right; just find another job."
• "Third, companies no longer have career paths; you have to do your own career management. At two years in a job, start planning for your next job move. At three to five years, find another job. You can transfer within the company or find a new one, but get the promotion within that window or you start to look like furniture. If your current company will promote you, by all means, stay if you like it there."
• "Last, spend some of your time and money to stay on top of technology. It's one of the key tools to doing more in less time. The more productive you are, the more promotable you become."