In a recent episode of the podcast You Should Know, hosted by William Tincup of WRKdefined, executives from isolved and Remote discussed their new partnership designed to help small and midsized businesses (SMBs) hire talent globally. Barry Gauch, Executive Vice President at isolved, and Pim Altena, GM for Remote Embedded and VP of Partnerships at Remote, explained how their collaboration removes legal, payroll, and compliance barriers that have traditionally kept SMBs from accessing international talent.
The conversation covered the origins of the alliance, starting with a formal RFP process that narrowed ten potential providers to five. Gauch noted that customer demand for global hiring had increased, leading isolved to seek a partner rather than build the capability in-house. "It's not our key competency, but we know we needed to deliver it," he said. Remote's API-first model and ability to offer three hiring modalities—Employer of Record (EOR) for fast market entry, contractor management for flexible engagements, and global payroll for established international teams—were key differentiators.
Altena emphasized the importance of hiring for skills rather than geography, recalling his own 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," he said. The executives highlighted the complexity of global employment, with Tincup noting that the State Department recognizes 192 countries, each with unique federal, state, and municipal payroll rules. Altena pointed out extreme differences 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 stressed that affordability and white-glove customer treatment were non-negotiable criteria for the partnership. He also previewed the integration with ApplicantPro, now fully folded into isolved, which will benefit talent acquisition teams and staffing-company resellers by offering a single platform. The episode underscores the growing trend of skill-based hiring and the need for SMBs to compete globally for talent.
