Maybe in your bubble. My experience is that very few recruiters are hounding me, because most of them don't know I exist. I don't live or work in a tech hub, I don't work for a famous company, and I haven't published anything. I don't think that's a particularly unusual position to be in.
It's absolutely nothing to do with talent or experience, though.
Yes, but the next step is actually interviewing at companies. It's obviously the best strategy to coax an employer into being interested in you, rather than the other way around. But most employers typically have an interview funnel, which I think is what people are talking about here. It sounds like you're referring to an employer actively seeking out a specific candidate that they're interested in. While that does happen, it's probably not the typical interview experience.
Just be honest (immediately so), be humble, and have confidence that you will do your very best. What ever happens after that you don't really control. It is okay to be nervous, but keep it in context. Nobody is shooting at you. You aren't drowning. Your housing isn't burning down. It is just a conversation.
That might be an unfair characterization. But only just.
But really, if someone can describe the detailed psuedocode for an algorithm and explain its runtime characteristics, are you going to make them write out what they have just said?
Personally, I think the talking is a lot more valuable than the whiteboard. I rarely have to hand-write complete algorithm on a whiteboard, but I regularly need to communicate technical ideas accurately and succinctly. That's what I'm really trying to demonstrate anyways: of course I can code, but I can also organize my thoughts well and communicate them clearly to others.
Honestly, in my experience, most application problems can be reasonably talked through without writing any code.
I share your experience that most problems can be reasonably talked through without writing code, but most people here are talking about a specific kind of interview that does not work that way.
I call this the talent gap. When you are a newb or completely lack either experience or confidence in your skills life is harder. You have massively increased competition for lower paying jobs filled with more menial tasks. I have been there too. If a candidate doesn't want to be there they will invest in themselves outside the office. I spent as much time as I could writing open source software and language parsers while on military deployments.
Most developers I know are frequently hounded by recruiters because the demand for senior developers is stupid ridiculous.