How to obtain a faculty position in an economic downturn?

This question comes up very often in academic circles. Because of the economic downturn, it has become non-trivial to obtain any kind of position, whether it is in academia or industry. It is a good time for employers but not a good one for prospective employees. The applicant pool is gargantuan nowadays and there are a lot of talents out there seeking jobs: With laid-offs all over the U.S., experienced hard-working Americans as well as foreign talents and fresh university grads are now all competing for the few jobs out there.

Just to give you a sense of reality, we placed an ad for a postdoc and we got around 400 applicants, ranging from experience industry laid-offs, university professors, mature postdocs and fresh PhD graduates all-together.

To come back to the question, there are a few basic requirements that an applicant has to meet:

(1) Good publications, preferably in high impact factor journals
(2) Postdoctoral research experience ranging from 3-5 years (or more?!)
(3) Teaching experience(desired)
(4) h-index > 5

These days, as mentioned above, there'll be a lot of people who will satisfy requirements (1)-(4). But the decisive factor to get hired is:

FUNDING. Schools prefer postdocs who wrote or co-wrote grant proposals and managed to obtain funding. If an applicant can bring his/her own research funding, they have statistically much higher chances of becoming a faculty member.