Recruiters have tough competition and have many challenges to overcome. There are a lot of recruiters and recruiting firms.
There are some recruiters whose behavior are hard to understand, maybe all have good reasons.
Case 1: these recruiters reached you multiple times and told of a very urgent position and could not wait; just then after giving a response and requested information, they vaporized as quickly as snow in summer. Are they just trying to collect enough resumes and candidates for their clients?
Case 2: the recruiter conducted screen interview, and spent the phone interview to almost convince that the job was not the right fit for you. Why bother to waste time on both sides? Do they have a quota in terms of number of folks to interview before making an offer to the secret candidate they have in mind?
Case 3: the recruiter criticized a company on the resume, like “so-and-so company is conservative”. How would they know? and if they know, why would they interview a candidate who used to work there?
There are mind-boggling yet real situations.
oliviatamccue 
i have not had much experience with recruiter either on job search or candidate search – as i have not changed my job in the last 12 years + and seldom reach out to them for job search – maybe twice in the past decade! For candidate search, they are not particularly useful based on my limited experience – they’re like an information centre and seldom did a good job in screening to ensure an appropriate profile is met. I guess maybe the the junior and really senior levels are better served for different reasons: at junior level, the differentiation is lesser and there are more comparable candidates for the hiring manager to consider, whereas at the really senior level, there are only a handful of qualified candidates and the commission at stake is huge and hence much better effort is usually made.
My colleague in the office next to mine has regular contacts with recruiters to keep herself abreast of the market condition and also keep herself on the radar screen of the recruiters – maybe there is one way of getting the most of them.