Small and midsized businesses (SMBs) have long struggled with the complexities of international hiring, but a new partnership between isolved and Remote is set to change that. In a recent episode of the podcast You Should Know, hosted by William Tincup of WRKdefined, Barry Gauch, Executive Vice President at isolved, and Pim Altena, GM for Remote Embedded and VP of Partnerships at Remote, detailed how their collaboration is collapsing the legal, payroll, and compliance barriers that once locked SMBs out of the global talent market.
The episode, titled "How isolved and Remote Are Opening Global Hiring to SMBs," explores the full arc of the alliance, from its origin story to rollout. Gauch explained that isolved conducted a formal RFP process, narrowing ten providers to five, ultimately choosing Remote due to its API-first model and ability to meet SMB and mid-market demand for cross-border hiring. “Our customer demand for global hiring had picked up,” Gauch said, adding that isolved chose partnership over building in-house because “it’s not our key competency, but we know we needed to deliver it.”
Remote offers three hiring modalities within a single platform: Employer of Record (EOR) for fast market entry, contractor management for flexible engagements, and global payroll for established international teams. Altena framed the opportunity in personal terms, recalling his time as a Remote customer trying to hire an Italian candidate he could not legally employ. “You're hiring people for skills, right? Like, that's what you should do, but you're actually constraining yourself often unconsciously by just the compliance capabilities, the legal entity footprint that you already have as a business,” Altena said.
The conversation delved into the operational realities of global employment. Tincup noted that the State Department recognizes 192 countries with which U.S. companies can do business, each with its own federal, state, and municipal payroll rules. Altena highlighted extreme divergences in labor law, such as pre-employment medical exams being mandatory in some jurisdictions and forbidden in others, and pointed to France and Germany's high employee-protection regimes. Gauch emphasized that affordability and white-glove customer treatment were non-negotiable criteria for isolved.
The partnership also integrates with ApplicantPro, now fully folded into isolved, which Gauch said will excite talent acquisition teams and staffing-company resellers looking for a unified platform. As skill-based hiring accelerates, this collaboration enables SMBs to compete for talent without geographic constraints, reshaping how they approach workforce expansion.
For more on this partnership, listen to the full episode of You Should Know, available now wherever podcasts are heard.
