Using Illustrator to Create Resumes/CVs

I was looking around at some graphic design resumes (CVs if you are in Europe) to see what they looked like, and I realized the ones where you can get free templates online are pretty subpar quality. Many of them have a rough outline of a headshot done in Illustrator, but without much color or visual flair. So I decided to try making my own. Because of my experience I have decided to add resume or CV creation services to my list of services on here.

Here is a basic template or style I found online I kind of modeled after, but it turned out being a completely different thing or design in the end:

It gave me an idea to upload a previous hand-drawn (in pencil and pastels) self portrait into Illustrator, trace it and make it a vector object and add it to my resume/CV; thus, make it a bit more interesting than the dry image above of a graphic of a self-portrait (obviously it is missing eyes and features, but even then it would not be that interesting in my opinion).

So here is the original image and some graphics I created with it as I was experiencing on how I want it to look (these are not in Illustrator yet, just bitmap or raster effects and experimentation):

Original pastel drawing

Here are some images I created when I uploaded the above into Illustrator and created various artistic effects and traced the originals. I later turned it back into bitmap or raster and again on my iPad played around with some effects to make the walls or divisions between the images seem more alive (liquify tool).

Despite all of these interesting images that came out as a result of the effects and traces using Illustrator, I still ended up using just the original image traced and with the feather effect if I remember right. It worked real well as a CV or resume portrait. 

Just a fun metallic raster effect added for good measure making it appear like it is made out of a piece of iron or something.