I'd never start out with a free/shareware 3D app if I could get my hands on a professional tool.
Sure I agree, but it's overkill for blitz development.
While Milkshape and the like are pretty good at what they do, they are IMO the equivalent of MSPaint versus Photoshop.
Milkshape is a piece of excrement IMO. Beyond that, well.. If you put Silo and Ultimate Unwrap together you got all the polygon/unwrapping functionality you'd ever need from Maya/Max. Silo's even got a couple of features Maya Complete hasn't (like subdivision surfaces) and is very similar to it workflow-wise.
Which is very good to put on your resume if you ever want to get a job in the industry.
It's far more important to be able to convince potential employers you're capable of producing quality work in a (very) limited timeframe. Getting your head around a new package is the easy part and any company with a clue knows it.