Really it depends on how you want to approach the character building. Do you decide what sort of character you want to play (I want to build a hacker!) or make a background and have them be good at whatever they might be good at (Joe was a computer repair technician who got caught up in the wacky world of shadowrunning!)?
Thankfully the metahuman races do have valid mechanical niches even if some are far smaller than others. A rough laydown:
Human: You want an edge score of 6+ or your Body + STR score <= 6
Dwarf: You care about having a high willpower and logic scores and edge < 6.
Ork: You want to save points.
Elf: You want Charisma or you really want agility.
Troll: You want a high STR score or be tough.
If you can be a metavarient, things change a bit. Fomori and Gnomes are amazing. Good examples of each race playing to their strengths can be seen in
Umaro's Archetypes.
