A partnership between isolved and Remote is enabling small and midsized businesses (SMBs) to hire talent across borders, collapsing the legal, payroll, and compliance barriers that have historically locked them out of international hiring. The collaboration was detailed on the July 21, 2026 episode of "You Should Know," hosted by William Tincup of WRKdefined, featuring Barry Gauch, Executive Vice President at isolved, and Pim Altena, GM for Remote Embedded and VP of Partnerships at Remote.
The integration allows isolved customers to access Remote's 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 explained that isolved chose partnership over building in-house because "it's not our key competency, but we know we needed to deliver it." The decision came after a formal RFP process that narrowed ten providers to five, with Remote selected due to its API-first model and ability to meet affordability and white-glove customer treatment criteria.
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," he said. The partnership addresses a growing demand: Gauch noted that "our customer demand for global hiring had picked up," driven by SMB and mid-market interest in cross-border hiring.
The operational reality of global employment is complex. Tincup noted 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 pointed to extreme divergence in labor law, citing that pre-employment medical exams are mandatory in some jurisdictions and forbidden in others, and highlighted France and Germany's high employee-protection regimes. The integration with isolved and Remote aims to simplify these complexities.
For SMB leaders, the partnership means access to a global talent pool without the need to establish legal entities in each country. The integration with ApplicantPro, now fully folded into isolved, is expected to excite talent acquisition teams and staffing-company resellers looking for a unified platform. As skill-based hiring accelerates, this alliance positions SMBs to compete for talent beyond geographic constraints, potentially reshaping how small and midsized businesses approach workforce expansion.
