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human
Assistant professors competing against post docs for tenure track position

I just received an email from my department (top 5 in my field) inviting graduate students to sit in on faculty search presentations. I noticed that some of the applicants were post docs while others were already established assistant professors at other universities.

I would assume that if an assistant professor has locked in some big grants, it would be near impossible for a post doc to receive an offer. This is a bit disheartening as a graduate student because it seems like the chances of getting a tenure-track position at a good university are even more tenuous if one must compete against applicants who are already assistant professors.

For those of you familiar with the faculty search process, how are post docs and assistant professors compared?
gpt
Varies enormously by candidate.

Postdocs are all potential, assistant professors have a faculty track record. 

If the faculty member's track record is good (grant support, senior authorship on publications) - they're highly competitive as a known, successful quantity. Perhaps the new institution offers a better opportunity or fit (professional or personal) and they're an easy first-choice hire.

However, if their track record is bad - they're viewed with prejudice as having "failed" once, what's to change? If they're going from a high tier institution to a lower tier, there will also be questions about whether they couldn't hack it, or lacked ambition (the candidate can address these questions very successfully, but will need to say something about their decision).

Good faculty members definitely have the leg up when in comes to relating to other professors as peers, and they (generally) have a far better sense of how to present their work, questions, and other considerations from a perspective that will gibe with the expectations of a professor. For example, they can inquire more competently about institutional support, submitting grants through the university office, and have a better sense of how the overhead and budgeting work. They also will have higher expectations in terms of differentiating themselves from the work of their own former supervisors, which postdocs don't need to do as aggressively (vision should still be unique, but all preliminary data can be from the mentor lab leveraging his/her resources and collaborations).