What should you take into consideration when deciding what types of fund to recruit for?

With on-cycle recruiting happening increasingly early, it seems increasingly hard to target PE recruiting in a meaningful way. After talking to some of the senior analysts/alumni from my firm they mentioned that when headhunters reach out, they expect you to be relatively targeted in where you're hoping to land from geography, to fund size, structure, and strategy. Without a ton of experience under your belt as far as banking work, it seems difficult to really know what types of companies/deals you might enjoy working on.

What factors did you guys considering when deciding between different firms/funds? For example is there a particular aspect that might draw you to growth vs buyout, or UMM vs MF? East vs West coast seems a little more clear/obvious. Further, how do you learn more about firm culture and specifics like whether associates work on operations or if there's a separate team that handles that (I've heard SLP did this from an MD last summer)?

I understand that you can only take the offers that you get when it comes to the actual process, but prior to that how did you guys figure out what you actually wanted to do post banking?