As an ironman player, I've learned to transverse jump into pulsar systems with the bulk of a planet in between my ship and the neutron star, so that I come into the system in the "shadow" of the planet. Your relative positioning to the transverse jump point seems to map roughly to where you show up in the system.
If there are no planets, you can try jumping in directly on top of the neutron star instead of through a standard jump point, and then emergency burn out if you get unlucky. At that point you're at the narrowest point of the beam.
As a general rule, I don't go into neutron star systems unless I have transverse jump.