Thomas H. Benton, Dodging the Anvil:
Essentially, if you want an academic job, you'd better be really good at what you do. You should be at a top university (although sometimes less-famous institutions can be effective at local placements); have at least a few high-quality publications, preferably in top-tier journals; have a dissertation that's nearly a publishable book, preferably under contract with a university press; be a charismatic and challenging teacher; be socially energetic without being threatening; have well-known and well-connected advisers who will support you without any reservations; be willing to live anywhere; be prepared to work as a visiting professor and move a few times in the first decade of your career; and be willing to live with the possibility that you will always have an itinerant, insecure, poorly compensated existence.
But you knew all that already.
Related posts, and links to two other earlier Benton pieces, are filed under Academia.