m3au's dev blog

Refactoring My Job Search Files with Claude in Under an Hour

Just spent under an hour reorganizing all my job search files with Claude 3.7 Sonnet. Pretty wild how fast it went.

My files were getting messy - stuff scattered in different folders, naming all over the place, and no real system for tracking applications. Been meaning to fix it but never got around to it.

Showed Claude my files and explained what I wanted. It quickly drafted a plan with a simple structure:

jobs/
├── applications/
│   ├── active/
│   └── archive/
├── templates/
│   ├── cv/
│   └── cover_letter/
└── personal/

Using Claude with Cursor was neat - it ran terminal commands while I watched. We made a work breakdown structure first and just worked through it step by step.

It handled the weird edge cases well - like when we found the same info in multiple files that needed merging instead of just moving.

By the end, Claude had processed 50+ files, made a bunch of directories, and written READMEs to explain everything. I mostly just said "looks good" and occasionally tweaked things.

Would've taken me forever to do this manually. Still surprised how much we got done so quickly.

My job search files now:

The Work Breakdown Structure

Here's what we did:

Phase 1: Setup and Organization

1. Create Directory Structure

2. Create README.md

Phase 2: Content Consolidation

3. Consolidate Personal Information

4. Standardize Experience Documentation

5. Organize Application Tracking

Phase 3: Template Standardization

6. Standardize CV Templates

7. Standardize Cover Letter Templates

Phase 4: Data Management

8. Organize Job Position Data

9. Clean Up Duplicate Files

Phase 5: Documentation and Finalization

10. Update Program Documentation

11. Create Quick Reference Guides

Experience Documentation Specific Tasks

12. Experience Documentation Enhancement

13. Create Role Templates

Development Plan

14. Consolidate Development Information

Next Steps

15. Directory-Specific Documentation

16. Email Templates

17. Company Documentation

18. Remaining Tasks

Final Directory Structure

Here's how it looks now:

.
├── README.md
├── REFACTORING_TODO.md
├── applications
│   ├── README.md
│   ├── active
│   ├── active.md
│   ├── archive.md
│   └── companies
├── development
│   ├── README.md
│   ├── plan.md
│   └── resources.md
├── personal
│   ├── README.md
│   ├── about.md
│   ├── contacts.md
│   ├── details.md
│   ├── education.md
│   ├── preferences.md
│   ├── profile.md
│   ├── program.md
│   ├── projects.md
│   ├── recommendations.md
│   └── skills.md
└── templates
    ├── README.md
    ├── applications_template.md
    ├── consolidated_experience.md
    ├── cover_letter
    ├── cv
    ├── email
    ├── experience_template.md
    ├── position_template.md
    ├── template_contact.md
    └── template_position.md

The whole setup is way more organized now. I can actually find stuff, and when I need to apply for a job, I have templates ready to go. No more digging through random files trying to remember where I put things.

This was one of those projects I kept putting off because it seemed like such a pain, but with Claude it was actually pretty quick. If you've got files that need organizing, definitely worth trying this approach.

#ai #claude #cursor #job-search #organization #productivity #refactoring #tools