the amount of crap coming in is ridiculous, and nothing like a few years ago. people apply to anything from anywhere

looking for a full stack web engineer? i'm a senior data analyst on the other side of the world, and you have python in your job description, and i know python, and i don't have a visa, and you explicitly said you can't sponsor visas right now, but i'm applying anyway

once you've seen that a few thousand times, you'll realise even though it's far from perfect, automated filtering is a must. that's all an ATS is. some people get so turned off by the acronym, but i bet if they were on the receiving end, their first instinct would be to build their own "automated filter" (ATS)