Really what it comes down to is knowing what the employer wants.

If the job specifies that for an Administrative assistant position, you need to be an expert in Microsoft Office, then that means that you need to know those applications.

"Oh, well I found a great text editor online that I use that actually lets me...."

That's nice. It's also irrelevant at this point in the process.

While you may be capable of doing good work without that background, that's not what your prospective employer is looking for.

If you are applying for a machinist's position, and they want you to have skills in the most recent build of AutoCAD, then coming to the table with a starship model that you lovingly built in Wings or Truespace is not what you prospective employer is looking for.

What a low end app is for many of these jobs is a kludge- that is, a quick and dirty way to cut corners towards an end.

Is that a bad thing? No. It's like crazy glue or duct tape. Any number of set designers and modelmakers will tell you a few stories about behind the scenes experiences involving duct tape and crazy glue at the last minute.

That said, a kludge is often a solution to an inadequately designed project. This is NOT appealing to a prospective employer. If you are selling yourself as a designer, they want to hear about how you were able to create a fully functional prototype in less than a week using the same state of the art tooling that they've invested hundreds of thousand of dollars in...Not how you had to use Bondo and Elmers glue to get something that looked passable for trade show. The latter story is the one you might share with fellow designers AFTER you get the job.

Showing up unprepared to discuss the employers needs and preferred toolset is doing neither of you any good.

Food for thought.