How to specify the download location with wget?

From the manual page:

-P prefix
--directory-prefix=prefix
           Set directory prefix to prefix.  The directory prefix is the
           directory where all other files and sub-directories will be
           saved to, i.e. the top of the retrieval tree.  The default
           is . (the current directory).

So you need to add -P /tmp/cron_test/ (short form) or --directory-prefix=/tmp/cron_test/ (long form) to your command. Also note that if the directory does not exist it will get created.

"-P" is the right option, please read on for more related information:

wget -nd -np -P /dest/dir --recursive http://url/dir1/dir2

Relevant snippets from man pages for convenience:

   -P prefix
   --directory-prefix=prefix
       Set directory prefix to prefix.  The directory prefix is the directory where all other files and subdirectories will be saved to, i.e. the top of the retrieval tree.  The default is . (the current directory).

   -nd
   --no-directories
       Do not create a hierarchy of directories when retrieving recursively.  With this option turned on, all files will get saved to the current directory, without clobbering (if a name shows up more than once, the
       filenames will get extensions .n).


   -np
   --no-parent
       Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving recursively.  This is a useful option, since it guarantees that only the files below a certain hierarchy will be downloaded.

man wget: -O file --output-document=file

wget "url" -O /tmp/cron_test/<file>