Finding a specific layer's MeshRenderer

I have the following method (originally found here), which searches through all layers with a specific name in order to then find its associated MeshRenderer:

 Renderer FindGameObjectsWithLayer (string layerName)
 {
     Renderer renderer = null;
 
     GameObject[] goArray = FindObjectsOfType (typeof(GameObject)) as GameObject[];
     
     for (int i = 0; i < goArray.Length; i++) {
         var layer = goArray [i];
         if (layer.gameObject.layer == LayerMask.NameToLayer (layerName)) {
             renderer = layer.gameObject.GetComponent<MeshRenderer> ();
             break;
         }
     }
 
     return renderer;
 }

My question is whether there's an easier way to simply find a layer with a name and then use GetComponent() to find its associated MeshRenderer or gameObject component?

UPDATE:

I find that I can also use the following method, but I'm still after a more efficient way of doing this:

 Renderer FindMeshRenderer (string tag)
 {
     try {
         return GameObject.FindGameObjectsWithTag (tag) [0].GetComponent<MeshRenderer> ();
     } catch (UnityException ex) {
         Debug.Log (ex.Message);
         return null;
     }
 }

I'm aware that doing this inside Update() isn't recommended so I'm simply caching this in a Start() event only.