A new partnership between isolved and Remote is poised to reshape how small and midsized businesses compete for global talent. The alliance, detailed in the latest episode of the podcast You Should Know hosted by William Tincup of WRKdefined, aims to collapse the legal, payroll, and compliance barriers that have historically prevented SMBs from hiring internationally. 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.
According to Gauch, the partnership was driven by rising customer demand. "Our customer demand for global hiring had picked up," he explained during the podcast. isolved conducted a formal RFP process that narrowed ten providers to five before selecting Remote. Gauch noted that isolved chose partnership over building its own solution because global hiring "is not our key competency, but we know we needed to deliver it." Altena, reflecting on his own experience as a Remote customer trying to hire an Italian candidate, emphasized the importance of skill-based hiring: "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."
The integrated platform offers three hiring modalities within a single system: Employer of Record (EOR) for fast market entry, contractor management for flexible engagements, and global payroll for established international teams. Altena highlighted Remote's API-first model as a differentiator, enabling seamless integration. The conversation also touched on the operational complexity behind global employment. Tincup noted 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 pointed to extreme divergences in labor law, such as pre-employment medical exams being mandatory in some jurisdictions and forbidden in others, and cited France and Germany's high employee-protection regimes.
Gauch emphasized that affordability and white-glove customer treatment were non-negotiable criteria in selecting a partner. He also previewed how the integration with ApplicantPro, now fully folded into isolved, will benefit talent acquisition teams and staffing-company resellers seeking a unified platform. For SMBs, the partnership represents a significant opportunity to access global talent pools without the burden of establishing legal entities or navigating complex compliance requirements in multiple countries. As skill-based hiring accelerates, this collaboration could level the playing field, allowing smaller companies to compete for top talent worldwide.
The episode is available now wherever podcasts are heard. For more information, visit isolved and Remote.
