Small and midsized businesses (SMBs) have long faced significant hurdles when attempting to hire talent across borders, including complex legal, payroll, and compliance requirements. A new partnership between isolved and Remote aims to remove those barriers, as detailed in a recent episode of the podcast You Should Know, hosted by William Tincup of WRKdefined. The episode, titled "How isolved and Remote Are Opening Global Hiring to SMBs," features Barry Gauch, Executive Vice President at isolved, and Pim Altena, GM for Remote Embedded and VP of Partnerships at Remote.
The discussion reveals how the two companies are providing an integrated solution that allows SMBs to hire internationally without the need for extensive infrastructure. Tincup guides the conversation through the partnership's origin story and rollout. Listeners learn that isolved conducted a formal RFP, narrowing ten providers to five, and that a referral relationship preceded the deeper embedded integration. Remote's API-first model was a key differentiator, offering 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.
Gauch explains that isolved chose partnership over building its own solution because "it's not our key competency, but we know we needed to deliver it." He notes that customer demand for global hiring had increased significantly. Altena frames the opportunity in personal terms, recalling his experience 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 says.
The conversation also delves into the operational realities of global employment. Tincup notes that the State Department recognizes 192 countries with which U.S. companies can do business, each carrying its own federal, state, and municipal payroll rules. Altena highlights the extreme divergence in labor law, citing that pre-employment medical exams are mandatory in some jurisdictions and forbidden in others, and points to France and Germany's high employee-protection regimes. Gauch emphasizes that affordability and white-glove customer treatment were non-negotiable criteria, and previews how the integration with ApplicantPro, now fully folded into isolved, will excite talent acquisition teams and staffing-company resellers looking for one platform instead of many.
This partnership matters because it levels the playing field for SMBs competing for top talent in a global market. By embedding Remote's capabilities into isolved's platform, businesses can now hire internationally with the same ease as hiring locally, accelerating skill-based hiring and expanding access to a diverse workforce.
