Regarding Janeway and Chakotay, they had similar moments in Voyager, too. At first she was thinking she'd get back together with her fiance Mark. Then eventually she decides that since she's a captain on a small ship that's isolated from the rest of the federation, she shouldn't fraternize with the crew.
Also though, the two have a tight bond. Think about how long they've known each other, and what they went through together. I mean, she had her first officer infiltrate his ship after which they all got flung to the opposite side of the galaxy, and she made him the first officer. A lot of what we're seeing use just that these two care so much about each other, not necessarily romantically.
I’m puzzled as to what more story they would have told had they been renewed. Not saying the show was bad, rather asking where would they have gone from here? When you’ve upgraded to moving anywhere in the galaxy instantaneously, you’ve traveled into the far future, rebuilt the federation, and you’ve conversed with aliens living outside of the galaxy, there isn’t much “boldly going” left in the formula.
Kind of like when all the characters in an anime get too powerful (DBZ), and it gets boring because you can’t raise the stakes any further.
The charitable explanation is HR knows they’d need it eventually if you do join up, so might as well as for everything now since they definitely need to know your state of residence. Also some companies send swag and other stuff to prospective hires.