I'm not a recruiter, nor a hiring manager, but personally, I'd be more concerned about the competence of someone who answered truthfully. Yes, engineers probably aren't hired for being good at salary negotiation, but still.. it isn't hard to figure out that telling the truth isn't beneficial.
I'm probably making $30k less than I could be making right now because I tell the truth! Had no idea so many people lied. Makes sense to do so but didn't seem to be worth the risk to me. I wish I had a way to quanitfy how many companies actually check for this. My last two times out I used the same recruiter so couldn't really lie to him, I think going forward I won't work with his agency and just make up my number.
A rule of thumb is most big companies will utilize big data in employment decisions. I currently work for a mid-size company and I had to go through a whole third party background check.
