If the vote later this week goes as anticipated, it will soon be illegal for Germany’s employers to check out job candidates’ private lives on Facebook and other social-networking sites.

The draft law was reported in the English version of Spiegel Online, one of Germany’s pre-eminent magazines, which quoted coverage from two leading newspapers, Die Welt and Süddeutsche Zeitung. The German Cabinet is expected to vote on it on Wednesday, as part of a package of privacy reforms.

Recruiters will be allowed to google prospective employees, and anything they might find beyond social sites is fair game: LinkedIn and other professional-networking sites, for example.

The article didn’t say how the government would enforce the policy, or what the consequences would be for breaking the law.

Recruiters routinely use social-networking sites to find out more about prospective employees, as a sort of cheap-and-easy background check. A 2009 survey commissioned by CareerBuilder said that 45 percent of employers used social-networking sites to research candidates, and about 35 percent admitted to rejecting applicants based on what those searches uncovered.