How fair is recruitment process in general?

You are right that in general, company owner stays away from recruitment process.
But the responsibilities given at lower level must be performed with right attitude while shortlisting the CV's.
As have been seen in many cases that some of the talents are incapable when it comes to write down about self, whereas in particular they are excellent on their present role and can prove to be a best performer.
It is very necessary in the part of senior manaegement who are involved in recruitment process to check the CV's at their own end after shortlisting by junior team members, so that best talent could not get ignored.
  Meanwhile the selection process as is observed in present job market is somewhat same as is in present question and need to corrected by team leaders. 

The modern recruitment process for an outsider is a very diffcult one. For a person who is eliminated by ATS, he has no clue as to why as there is no reasons given.But then , this technology saves time for the recruiter, as well. 

Recruitment process now-a-days is generally fair.  Especially we have a lot of Human Resources experts who knows how to do the background investigations for candidates to confirm the expertise and experiences mentioned in their CVs.  For lover levels, they rely it from the internal HR, but for the delicate positions they course through Manpower Pooling experts to get the right candidate for the position

Due to the usually large volume of applicants for most entry level vacancies, its usually very difficult to sieve through tonnes of resume. That unfortunately means that some creditable candidates might not get the opportunity to show case what they have to offer. But this does not look like a trend that will change soon, in fact it might just get worse. So it is often best for candidates to do what they can to stand out, including key information about what makes them unique from other candidates. Using of either proctored or un-proctored CBT tests is one (unbiased) way to prune down large applicants  to a manageable number, where resumes can be scrutinized.

 

In the case of experienced hires, its fair enough as candidates are often interviewed one on one, and the number of applicants are not often too much to prevent a detailed inspection of their resume. Situational judgement tests are quite handy too, that is if you know exactly how the metrics of the test works.

Many times an Advertiser is seen asking for a candidate with a particular language or nationality background that is fine it is his business but when there are no conditions mentioned then the selection should be fair with every one.
Why is then you feel that you were meeting the criteria but were not contacted? Is the advertising just for a show? Is the candidate already fixed? Or there is some other reason? Can some one answer these questions?