There are academic jobs out there, full-time ones even, and both temporary and tenure track ones. It is challenging to get one, but not impossible. Of course the competition is very fierce, and there are often many many many applications for any full time (even sometimes part time) position. But there are a lot of things you should know, and things you can do, to help you when you go on the job market. Honest. And things that can sink your application like a lead weight.
No matter where you are in academic life, from an undergraduate student to a Ph.D. recipient (or an ABD*) to someone who has been out of the academic grind for a while and wants to go back, it can be helpful to hear from someone on the other side. I have done those applications and I have served on a whole bunch of several search committees. Follow me below the orange board of the Game of Life for more.
*ABD stands for "All But Dissertation," and can mean everything from someone is scheduled to defend the dissertation in a month, or the person has just started to write and has several years to go, to someone who has been writing so long while other things have come up, and probably may not ever finish. I was hired "ABD" for a non-tenure track position, and finishing was a hard slog. I have known others who never finished once they started to teach full time.
There are several stages to a job search, and it has gotten more formal and legalistic over the past several years, since I got my permanent position. But it is worth keeping in mind that the ideal situation is that an advertisement will indicate quite clearly what a university (college, school) is looking for and how applications will be evaluated. There are a variety of levels of advertising -- and they tend to mean different things. A temporary, last-minute position may be only internally advertised, even if it is not strictly limited to people present in the campus job pool already. Some positions will be advertised regionally, sent via email to friends of the members of the department or the search committee, and posted on the campus "open faculty positions" website. These are much cheaper ways to advertise than a national search where positions are posted in national publications (and some universities and legal departments still require posting a position in a print publication, although I don't know that it is a federal requirement in all cases anymore).
It took us months to construct an advertisement for a full time position this past year. We had to run it past the equity and legal offices, and that was once it had made it out of the department round of editing, and past the dean as well. We clearly had to specify what was required for consideration and what was preferred. It was important what went into each category -- for a temporary position (because at some point we would love to have that position become a tenure track one) we specified a "terminal degree" (Ph.D., of course, but also Ed.D., D.Phil., M.F.A., and other alphabetic soup kinds of things). This was a challenge and dramatically narrowed the pool of applicants, as did the delay in advertising (positions were posted after the national conference in my field, the one where most of the interviewing goes on), and the quick turnaround (we started reviewing applications at exactly one month, the earliest the university would let us do so).
We had a grid, or matrix, on which every element of the advertised requirements was given a point value, one approved by the department chair, the dean, the provost's office, and the legal department. A greater number of points was assigned for a required characteristic (the aforementioned terminal degree, for example), and a lesser number was given for preferred ones, such as an indication that the applicant had an understanding of and desire to participate in a liberal arts undergraduate teaching environment.
At that point, you have only a written component to impress the committee (which will include members of the department to which you are applying, as well as often at least one member from outside the department, particularly in a university which emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches to material, as does a liberal arts university, for the most part). This means it should look good.
We no longer have to worry about coloured paper, thank heavens, as everything is submitted online, but don't use anything other than black and white, and limit your font and variation in font size. What font/typeface should you use? I don't really care, but I don't want the design to overwhelm the content. Frankly, although I link to a site that screams "Don't use Times New Roman" I find it the easiest to read, and I do require it from my students in their papers. Unless you are applying for a creative position, do not use a non-standard font, and for me that would mean anything sans serif. But other people disagree. I don't evaluate a C.V. based on the font used, but it slows me down, and when I am reading more than ten or fifteen applications (and the search I am on that reviews starting at the end of the summer hasn't been widely advertised yet and it already has 45 applicants). You want the content to shine through, not the design. Again, unless you are applying for a position where design is what you will be teaching.
Because this is what we have to evaluate you, do not have errors. Don't address a letter to a different university, or submit an application for the wrong position. You likely won't be considered for the one you thought you applied for unless you submitted directly to that position, and you won't be addressing the qualifications for the one you actually did apply to, so you probably will not be very high on the ranking for the one in question. And more important than just about anything, particularly for a job in a traditional research/writing field, DO NOT HAVE SPELLING ERRORS IN YOUR C.V. OR LETTER OF APPLICATION. Ahem. We are very likely to think less of you, as we want you to be able to teach writing, value formal academic discourse, and model good research and writing processes for the students. We expect them to write correct English; we expect the same of our colleagues.
When I said above that we don't want you to address a letter to a different university when you are applying here (something way too easy to do with cut and paste these days), it also means do not assume something about the institution without checking. When I was applying for positions, the internet did not exist (even email was brand new). So when I sent in my material for the forerunner to this job, I knew very little about the university, other than the location, and that a friend of mine had gone here to do a Master's Degree, and he was pretty smart so I figured it wasn't as podunk as the name would imply (a regional university, rather than a flagship or private liberal arts one). However, the minute they called to see if I wanted to interview and I said yes, I went to do some more serious research on the place, reading the U.S. News and World Report and Money Magazine rankings, and all the general college guides I could get my hands on. Nowadays, there is no excuse for not knowing about the university, and even the program to which you are applying. You can figure out who the faculty are, and if this is to be a sabbatical replacement, you can usually figure out who you would be replacing. You can get an idea what the department values by seeing what they choose to promote. For example, do they want someone with a strong international background or connections? Or someone who has a major research project or has a long term connection with one that can benefit their students? In our case, we are a long way from any major city, and we don't have a museum nearby. If you have investigate us, we will be able to tell, because you won't be wanting to live in an exciting metropolis with international air connections. You will know we are rural. When we advertise for someone to help build a museum studies program, we are looking for someone with the ability to work through the challenges in that task. One time we interviewed someone for a position whose main concern was that she be able to continue to participate in a once or twice a month seminar in Washington, D.C., and wanted time away from her classes guaranteed in order to allow her to do that. Her participation was indeed an impressive thing, but we are primarily a teaching university and, while we do want people who are actively publishing, we expect the priority to be the teaching aspect of the job. So know the university to which you are applying.
We are not very likely to pursue someone who has negative things to say about the state or community, or whose tone indicates that he or she thinks coming here will be lowering themselves** or whose letter tells us, in so many words, you would be lucky to have me deign to teach your students. We once had an applicant who was in appropriate for all sorts of reasons, but said in the cover letter that it would not be possible to consider a position for just one year (it had been advertised as possibly with renewal up to three years), so it would have to be guaranteed to even consider a campus interview. The letter of application is not the place to negotiate terms, and even the on-campus interview stage is touchy. Definitely ask for more when you are offered a position, if you think it is desirable, but know that there may be consequences to that request. And those consequences can include a no, and a follow-on "take it or leave it" ultimatum.
We have faculty on campus who have decent-sized research grants from the NSF and whose books have been reviewed in the New York Times, who hold international fellowships and have received awards from foreign governments in recognition or their research and contributions to their fields, presidents and other officers in national organizations and editors of significant journals. The particular university from which you have your degree matters only somewhat -- we will not hire you simply because you have a degree from Harvard or Stanford; we have lots of those elite universities represented among our faculty. We send students to them for graduate school and have former students from here serving as faculty there. Our students are good, too. This university is the most selective public university in terms of its admissions in the state (frankly, in the region). This means our faculty and students are ambitious, intelligent, and challenging. We have high expectations for them. If we pursue hiring you, it means you have the potential to fit in. So don't be condescending in your letter or your interview. If you don't think we are good enough for you, you should not be applying here. You won't be a good fit.
Although we are not part of the "Old South" we do value courtesy. Be polite (thank you notes are a new aspect to the interviewing process and one I think is very nice). Be on good behavior. Don't snark on other universities you have known; we won't know that you won't turn around and do the same to us.
And one final thing -- you and we will pretty well know by the time you come to campus if you will be okay at the requirements (it is an expensive thing to bring someone and we won't bring someone if they can't do the job). The on-campus interview is a selling thing, as much us selling ourselves to you as you selling yourself to us. It has been clear to me over the past couple of decades that you know from the first conversation whether you will want to work with someone or not. That goes for both parties.
May you have the good fortune to end up somewhere that will fit with what you want, or that you will grow into, as I have. I love my job. May you be able to say that by the time you have been in a job for a few years (and hopefully continue to feel it until the day you retire).
Good luck!