Small and midsized businesses (SMBs) seeking to hire talent across borders now have a streamlined path forward, thanks to a newly announced partnership between human resources technology provider isolved and global employment platform Remote. The collaboration, detailed in a recent episode of the podcast "You Should Know" hosted by William Tincup of WRKdefined, aims to eliminate the legal, payroll, and compliance obstacles that have historically locked SMBs out of international hiring.
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 explain how their companies are integrating Remote's global hiring infrastructure directly into isolved's platform, allowing SMBs to hire internationally without setting up foreign legal entities. Gauch noted that "customer demand for global hiring had picked up" and that isolved chose partnership over building its own solution because "it's not our key competency, but we know we needed to deliver it."
The integration supports 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. Altena highlighted the importance of skill-based hiring, stating, "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 partnership emerged from a formal request for proposal process that narrowed ten providers to five, with Remote ultimately selected for its API-first model and ability to handle complex compliance across 192 countries. Altena pointed to extreme divergences in labor law, such as pre-employment medical exams being mandatory in some jurisdictions and forbidden in others, and noted high employee-protection regimes in France and Germany. Gauch emphasized that affordability and white-glove customer treatment were non-negotiable criteria.
The integration also connects with ApplicantPro, now fully folded into isolved, which Gauch said will excite talent acquisition teams and staffing-company resellers looking for a unified platform. The episode is part of the "You Should Know" podcast series from WRKdefined, which explores leadership challenges shaping the modern workplace.
