The Phone Interview

[scorched]

Keep your chin up, we are all tougher on ourselves than others are.
Plus, the phone interviews are tough due to not seeing body language and facial expressions. That makes silence even more awkward.

Over the years I have become pretty good a them due to my current job required 8 phone interviews before I got a live one, the job before that required 10.
For me, they are just like doing a research paper, I have note cards or my tablet handy with a list of topics to hit and other pieces I was able to google.

Also a technique I use just after answering a question, is to ask "I know that sounded long winded but did I answer your question?" Or something like that. In your example, you could have countered your own statement of empowerment, by asking, "I know that was a very cookie cutter answer, but would you care for me to explain how I approach it differently?".
98% of the time the interviewer says the question was covered, 1% will clarify the question and allow you to re-answer or to expand it. While they answer, you just gained a moment to breathe and clear your fog, where your thinking you went off course. Just make sure to keep the second answer really brief. Then the last 1% will just move on, nothing you can do.

Recently I interviewed with Amazon on the AWS (cloud) side, and before the recruiter setup the first call, I had already created an AWS account, used and read through as many of their products as possible.
Then in the phone interview the person asked what I knew about AWS, I could have stood at podium for an hour telling what I learned. And my little 1-2 minute pitch had the guy asking how I knew so much. I answered truthfully, said I seriously wanted to work there, and I had better well know what AWS was all about before hand.
I am now into waiting on my 3rd call next week.

Hope you can take some pride in knowing you got the interview. In this day of digital resume analysis, it's tough to get noticed.
I have more tips on that if your interested, as I get 2x-3x in replies compared to my friends. They always wonder how.

Hint I have 10-12 versions of my resume.