Exactly. Like hiring managers, recruiters and their cousins do not lie to the candidate. It is a game, and one has to use the necessary tools, including lying (in a reasonable neighborhood of truth) about one's experience and the offers received, to achieve the goal, which is to earn as much as possible from the company we want to work for.
For the people in the back, being honest makes you, and me, and everyone else undesirable. We've all had moments, days, even weeks of frustration, anger, disillusionment, technical incompetence, days we'd rather spend fighting with a gorilla than showing up for work, but we certainly don't say that when asked, "How do you handle conflict at work?" So I usually lie and present myself as a saint, but in a pragmatic way. I don't want to be perceived as a weak person, after all.
For the people in the back, being honest makes you, and me, and everyone else undesirable. We've all had moments, days, even weeks of frustration, anger, disillusionment, technical incompetence, days we'd rather spend fighting with a gorilla than showing up for work, but we certainly don't say that when asked, "How do you handle conflict at work?" So I usually lie and present myself as a saint, but in a pragmatic way. I don't want to be perceived as a weak person, after all.