diff --git a/.circleci/create_circleci_config.py b/.circleci/create_circleci_config.py
index 38e41a5d504849..c0571c82817830 100644
--- a/.circleci/create_circleci_config.py
+++ b/.circleci/create_circleci_config.py
@@ -163,6 +163,18 @@ def to_dict(self):
             command = f'echo {tests} | tr " " "\\n" >> tests.txt'
             steps.append({"run": {"name": "Get tests", "command": command}})
 
+            # get test files while ignoring __init__ files
+            steps.append(
+                {"run": {"name": "Get tests", "command": """TESTFILES=$(circleci tests glob {tests} | sed 's/\S\+__init__.py//g') && \
+echo $TESTFILES | tr ' ' '\n' | sort | uniq > circleci_test_files.txt && \
+cat circleci_test_files.txt && \
+TESTFILES=$(circleci tests split --split-by=timings circleci_test_files.txt) && \
+# massage filepaths into format manage.py test accepts && \
+TESTFILES=$(echo $TESTFILES | tr "/" "." | sed 's/.py//g') && \
+echo $TESTFILES"""}
+                }
+            )
+    
             # grep -oE "class[[:space:]]+[[:alnum:]_]+[[:space:]]*\(" tests/models/llama/test_modeling_llama.py | grep 'Test' | sed -E 's/class[[:space:]]+([[:alnum:]_]+)[[:space:]]*\(/\1/'
             command = 'TESTS=$(circleci tests split tests.txt --split-by=timings --timings-type=testname) && echo $TESTS > splitted_tests.txt'
             steps.append({"run": {"name": "Split tests", "command": command}})