Hey Rorian - you mention that you’d like advice on what type of corp you should join in your post. That decision depends largely on what you guys want to do in Eve and how much time you have play. If you three are comfortable flying with very large groups, I would look at joining a group in Null Sec, at least for a couple months. Null sec is a pretty cool experience when you’re new to the game - your alliance/coalition will likely provide you with a huge amount of services, partially reimburse you for pvp loses, and let you see some really impressive ships and combat in action. It’s hard to say which specific group to join, that depends largely on the culture you guys are looking for. You can usually get a sense of what you’re dealing with culture wise from recruitment ads.
Null sec megagroups do come with tradeoffs though. Usually they’ll have rules about what you can and can’t do, who you can shoot, and sometimes mandatory time commitments. If you guys are looking for a smaller group with less restrictions/lower time commitments, you might do well with a group like ours. Check us out, South of Heaven or SOHCO: South of Heaven [SOHCO] Seeks Casual PvPers!. We can’t offer the services larger groups can, but we can get you PvPing tomorrow (literally, we’re running a fleet at 0100 tomorrow), were mostly EST/CST, and we can teach you almost anything you want to know. Good luck!