Historically tools use to be made for a given engine and anything built for that engine had to be fit to finish as to the specifications of what the engine would or would not allow. This created the need for skill sets that were required to fill the specification as well limited to the preferred application use as to what works with the pipeline.
In general modeling was modeling and animation was animation but to get stuff into the game tools that were made only worked with a limited number of programs so this tended to create 3ds Max modelers and Maya animators yet the skill sets for the two are identical.
Of course things change and gets better and if I was to point to the watershed moment in time I would have to say the introduction of FBX moved the cornerstone into the edit environment, like Unreal 4 or even UDK, that opened the playing field to a vast amount of skills that are not necessarily about sticking to the default applications.
For example.
One of the advanced requirements for next gen games is hair so instead of finding someone with skills of being able to push buttons someone who is a hairdresser could fill the spot and you would only need to teach them to use a different set of tools but would not have to teach them to do hair designs for a video game.
So today I would say a needed skill is to become software savvy and know what options are available to you that “must” support the FBX pipeline as it is not “just” another export format.
By the way.
Our team has been spending the last year reorganizing our entire art pipeline just because of Unreal 4.
The short answer.
If it has FBX get it into Unreal 4 as soon as possible and see what happens as the rules you once though was there is no longer. 
Also
Don’t focus on the software but the craft. You will learn more from Andy Warhol than you could reading a user manual.
Just saying.