cron job verification

[Ed Lawson]

I have several cron jobs that I have written to sync various
directories and to do backups.  I did this via crontab -e as root.
My question is how do I verify the operation of the these jobs. I
thought there would be mail sent to root or its alias upon completion,
but there is none.

What is the best way to receive verification or otherwise check on
whether or not the job ran and if it ran to completion properly? 

I suspect the answer to the question is absurdly obvious, but I'm
stupid.

Ed Lawson