In a recent episode of the podcast "You Should Know," hosted by William Tincup of WRKdefined, the partnership between isolved and Remote was explored in depth. 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 two executives detail how their collaboration is collapsing the legal, payroll, and compliance barriers that have historically locked small and midsized businesses (SMBs) out of hiring internationally.
Tincup guides the discussion through the full arc of the alliance, from origin story to rollout. Listeners learn how isolved ran a formal RFP that narrowed ten providers to five, why a referral relationship preceded the deeper embedded integration, and what makes Remote's API-first model different from competitors. The trio unpacks Remote's three hiring modalities inside a single platform: Employer of Record (EOR) for fast market entry, contractor management for flexible engagements, and global payroll for established international teams.
Gauch is direct about what tipped isolved toward Remote after research showed SMB and mid-market demand for cross-border hiring was climbing. "Our customer demand for global hiring had picked up," he explains, adding that isolved chose partnership over building because "it's not our key competency, but we know we needed to deliver it." Altena frames 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 says.
The conversation digs into the operational reality behind global employment. Tincup notes 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 points to the extreme divergence in labor law, citing that pre-employment medical exams are mandatory in some jurisdictions and forbidden in others, and highlights 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, enabling them to compete for global talent without the heavy investment normally required for international compliance and payroll infrastructure. As skill-based hiring accelerates, the ability to hire the best person regardless of location becomes a competitive necessity. By embedding Remote's capabilities directly into isolved's platform, SMBs can now hire internationally with the same ease as domestic hires.
