It is no secret that the academic job market is highly competitive. I am at a large, research intensive university in south Florida, and even very specific positions attract dozens of applicants. Besides being highly competitive, academic positions are often very specific. While really large and prestigious institutions might put out a general call (that is still quite specific relative to the diversity of fields in biology) for an ecologist or an evolutionary biologist, most jobs are more specific: a microbial ecologist, or a plant ecologist, or evolutionary biologist who studies invertebrates. The combination of a highly competitive job market and the uncertain and specific positions that open in a particular university means that even highly competitive applicants can pick either the type of they want, or the location where they want to live, but only rarely both.
I should hit the pause button here and explain that I don’t put a value judgement on prioritizing either the type of job you want or where you want to live. All of this depends on the specifics of your situation and how you want to live your life. I am just trying to be descriptive, not prescriptive. I am also not defending the way that things are, but I don’t think that anything is likely to change any time soon.
I think as soon as you acknowledge and understand this tradeoff, then it makes the strategy for applying for jobs much more straightforward. If you can only be happy in the Bay area in northern California, you will need to be open to academic positions beyond the tenure track, and probably non-academic positions as well. On the other hand, if your primary goal is to be a tenure-track faculty member, you should apply broadly, irrespective of the location of the position, which will maximize your chances of getting the kind of job you want.
By the way, I think this sort of logic applies to any type of specialized job. If you want a job in a zoo, or you want to work for the National Park Service, you also are unlikely to be able to have a great degree of control over the location of your job. Of course, there are many jobs (nurse, doctor, lawyer, accountant) that can be relatively easy to transfer between locations (at least relative to jobs in academia).
As with many things, there is a sort of middle ground. I think you can perhaps focus on a particular region, or try to avoid a region, and still be successful, particularly if you have a competitive application. For example, while I grew up in the corn belt of the Midwest in Iowa, I don’t particularly like cold weather. So while I applied to jobs across the US, I focused on jobs in the southern third of the country. Some regions (e.g., the West Coast, the Northeast, the Midwest, the Southeast) have a ton of schools, and you would be more likely to be successful in focusing on those areas than on a single city or state.
Finally, I think it is a good idea to try and be open minded (if possible given your circumstances) about where you would be willing to live. Way back in 2014 when I was first on the job market, I got interviews at many places (rural Kansas, rural Illinois, rural Pennsylvania, Jackson, Mississippi) that would not have been at the top of my list of places that I wanted to live. However, in each case, I met amazing people doing good work in those schools, and I was usually surprised by how much I liked the town and the area. So if there is a chance you might be willing to live somewhere that is not your top choice, go ahead and apply, and you might be surprised at how much you end up liking the institution and the area.
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