I am picky about following now. I am already following a lot of people by my norms, after all, and I’d rather follow people closely. I’ve put the flowchart up in Nick Nicholas’ answer to What would make you follow me?
If it’s a candidate out of the blue—like a new follower, and I wonder whether i should return the gesture: I’ll scan their topic list, and their last 20-odd answers. If I like most of them, I’ll follow. If I like only one or two, then no. So same as you OP.
But with something like 10–15 new followers a day, I’m much more summary about making a call than I was when I was getting 2–3 new followers a day.